


Red Velvet

by ellebb



Category: Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M, Multi, One Shot Collection, continuity?? who she??, listen im not really sure what to tag All Of This im just chucking it all on here, posted in order written, that are tied together with the thread of my widow
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 17:54:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 45,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14062263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellebb/pseuds/ellebb
Summary: A collection devoted to my Baroness Sabine of Namaire, with occasional OC from her canon.





	1. 7KPP Week 2017: Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So I've posted in the order they were written, but here's the order if sticking to the (vaguely) true timeline:
> 
> 12\. Four Years and Seven Months  
> 1\. Past  
> 6\. An Alternate Meeting  
> 15\. Family  
> 8\. Anniversary  
> 16\. Dawn  
> 7\. Victoire  
> 14\. Fear  
> 11\. Serah and Armand  
> 13\. Heart  
> 4\. Hope  
> 10\. A Kiss  
> 3\. Growth  
> 2\. Sacrifice  
> 9\. A Welcome  
> 5\. Future
> 
>  _ **Vaguely.**_ There's a lot of overlapping, so. I'll update this list as I go.

“Well, saying nothing of the man’s taste,” Hugo murmured amusedly, “He certainly spares no expense.  I think those horses are wearing more gold in their hair than my sisters do.” **  
**

Across the room, sprawled out in a wingback in the manner only the idlest of young noblemen can manage, Guillaume ignored his friend.

Hugo leaned a bit further out the window and watched the scene below and across the way.  A carriage had clattered up the lane and stopped at the door of the manor on the other side.  The early afternoon light, even filtered as it was through the density of the capital’s structures, still glittered on the gilded edges of the four-horse coach. The winding and overbright ornamentation danced over the carriage until it resolved into the coat of arms of Namaire.

Various stablehands and coachmen spilled out into the lane and swarmed the great, hulking thing now occupying the street.  A door popped open on the other side, out of sight, and Hugo strained to catch a glimpse of impeccably white gloved hands being proffered to whatever emerged from inside of the vehicle.

“Aren’t you the least bit curious?” Hugo asked.

Behind him, Guillaume grunted noncommittally.

Another small flurry of servants, and the master of that grand city manor emerged into view.  The baron was as gray-haired and thin as ever.  Namaire ran a cursory and flinty look over the area, and then smoothed a hand over his thinning scalp before donning his hat.  He turned back to the coach and offered a hand to the new lady of the house.

Hugo whistled.

“I take it back about his taste,” he said.

A soft rustling preceded Guillaume as he leaned beside Hugo out of the window.

“I thought you weren’t curious,” Hugo said smugly.

“Shut it,” Guillaume finally said.

For all that she was purportedly hired on for her youth (all of a grand old seventeen) and the width of her birthing hips, the Baroness of Namaire turned out prettier than expected.  Who knew a pig farmer’s child, or whatever her people were, could wear a blush and a strawberry pout as well as she did?  And a glossy, high-piled style to her dark curls that could have come from any of the finest parlors in the capitol.

“So that’s what a man’s life is worth,” Guillaume said quietly.

“Oh come now,” Hugo chided. “Be a good sport.  Alain would’ve–”

“You didn’t know him,” Guillaume retorted sharply. “Not really.”

Hugo turned to frown at his friend. “Bit below the belt, don’t you think?”

Guillaume glanced at him and then away.

“Sorry.”

Hugo patted him on the shoulder, leaning back out the window.  The girl had taken her husband’s arm, and he had led her to the broad marbled steps of their city manor.  For a moment– just a moment– the baroness paused to look over her shoulder.  Guillaume and Hugo stared at her and her bright gaze, the arch of her brow and the fullness of her lip.  Then they disappeared into the depths of the house.

“I think she saw us,” Hugo murmured.

Shrugging in a most ungentlemanlike fashion, Guillaume pushed away from the window and retreated to the interior of the room – a study belonging to the Lorraine family and used in recent years by Hugo.  The crenelated glass of a bar set chimed and tinked as Guillaume poured himself something brown.  Hugo accepted his own glass from his friend and plopped down into a leather chaise.

“That,” Guillaume stated, waving at the window, “could pass some time, I should think.”

Hugo considered him, smiling a small, mischievous smile. “Hmm.  A young and vibrant girl– a shepherdess even– stuffed into corsets and manners and just waiting for the moment her decrepit husband creakily turns his eye away.  Bursting at the seams to have  _fun_.”

Guillaume considered his glass. “A girl preyed on by someone beyond her age and station.  Living in regret and despair.  Bemoaning her fate, she waits for someone to distract her.”

“You,” Hugo pointed at him, “have been reading too many sentimental novels.”

“And you’ve been reading too many tawdry ones.  Shepherdess, indeed.”

“A butter-churner’s hands.  Wonder what that’s like,” Hugo said dreamily.

Guillaume ignored him and approached the window again.  The carriage had been moved into the coach house and only a few servants moved outside the house, fetching luggage and personal effects into the house.

“You’ll tell me when the baron goes out?”

“With my swiftest little messenger pigeon,” Hugo said, smiling.

-

“Lord Hugo Lorraine and Lord Guillaume Comtois.  To pay their respects to her Ladyship.”

The many windows of the east drawing room of the Namaire manor opened onto a neat little garden full of the great springtime blossoms: hyacinth, lavender, peonies, and lillies of the valley.  Warm and prettily scented breezes floated through some of the tall, thin windows propped open for the purpose.  Light washed the delicate and pale furniture, the feathery drapes, and the shimmering silks.  At a sitting area, Baroness Namaire stood from her seat.

She wore a blue day dress, setting off the startlingly pale blue of her eyes.  The dress was about as expected: expensive with as much taste as a rich man can afford.  But the other day their eyes did not catch what lay beneath her traveling cloak: a figure most generous indeed, and laced and draped in a way that did, so to say,  _draw the eye_.

Hugo cleared his throat and stepped forward, bowing the proper depth.  Guillaume followed suit.  The girl curtsied in return.

“Forgive our sudden intrusion,” Hugo said smiling. “But since I live just across the way, I thought myself and my chaperone here should extend a welcome to the new lady of the house.”

“A most  _welcome_ welcome, Lord Hugo,” the Baroness returned with a charming sparkle to her eye. “It is my first season in town and I have met few lords and ladies as of yet.”

“We shall have to rectify that,” Hugo said.

“Please sit, gentlemen,” she said with a gesture toward the other seats. “Will you take tea?”

Giving their assent as the young men took their seats, the Baroness then turned to her butler standing quietly to the side.

“Please have tea sent up.  Thank you, Felix.”

There was a pause as they settled down in their velvety, silken seats and considered one another with polite society smiles.  What did this girl, with her proud little posture and her knowing little nose, think of them?  Hugo – a count’s son with a pleasant smile and an eye that was too obvious to call anything other than roaming.  And Guillaume – already in power of his own estate and tall, dark, brooding, and any other adjective likely to describe a penny novel hero.

“You’ll be making it to the Concourse, won’t you?” Hugo asked.

The Baroness idly smoothed out her dress across her lap. “Of course.  It opens the season, doesn’t it?”

“Three hours of preening and judging, all for a minute of dizzying activity.  And that’s not even getting to the  _horses_ ,” Hugo grinned.

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about horseflesh,” she said lightly. “But from the stories they’re really the sideshow.  Now, preening – I  _may_ know a thing or two about that.”

She batted her eyes, the darling.  Hugo’s grin widened as Guillaume shifted in his seat.

“I confess,” she said, “Lady Villeaux’s ball next week sounds much more to my taste.”

Hugo laughed. “You are new to town, aren’t you?  Lady Villeaux–”

They gossiped for a few minutes more about upcoming events before tea was served in fine china and accompanied by a fair little mountain of cakes and finger sandwiches.  Lady Villeaux’s bad habits with naive debutantes was discussed, along with all the teas and soirees that should and shouldn’t be attended.  Hugo advised her to have a portrait done by the latest artist of the moment – he would no doubt be already booked for years, but one look at Namaire’s new bride and he’d drop it all for her.  And imagine the looks on all those women’s faces when the Baroness is the star of the Salon (one of the most important events for artists, their noble patrons, and other bloodthirsty animals.)

Finally, she placed her cup and saucer down with a soft little  _clink_.  She considered them.

“You’ve been quiet, Lord Guillaume,” she said, cocking her head. “In fact, I don’t think you’ve spoken a word.  Were my cakes that poor?”

She smiled at the man in question.  He stared at her for a moment, and then placed his own little cup down.

“Perhaps it’s just been a long while since I’ve been in this house,” Guillaume said quietly. “Or maybe it hasn’t been nearly long enough.”

“Guillaume,” Hugo warned.

“Well, as you can see, I haven’t thrown the portraits in the attic or smashed the heirloom tea set,” the Baroness said.

She held amusement in her gaze as she met Guillaume’s pointedly disinterested stare.

“Look, I know you two knew Alain,” she said. “And I can tell you’re here on some dare or whatever it is you rich boys get up to.  I see no reason why we can’t all be friends.”

She smiled at them slowly, in a way that said she knew exactly how pretty she looked doing so.  With her dark glossy curls and her strawberry pout.

Guillaume stood and carefully adjusted his cuffs to a respectable appearance.  His hooded and arch gaze leisurely roved until it landed back on the Baroness.

“You are a child.  A woman of the court would have known to merely insinuate for at least three more teas.”

He bowed perfunctorily.

“Good afternoon, my lady.”

He turned, and did not see her expression drop in anger and disbelief– proof of her inexperience to lose propriety so quickly over so little.  Hugo made his own hasty farewells, begging forgiveness for his friend’s rudeness, and retreated after Guillaume.  They grabbed their hats and cloaks, threw them on, and stood outside in the quiet lane.

“Really, you are too much sometimes,” Hugo scolded.

“ _Please_ ,” Guillaume snorted. “The eyelashes?  Every time you choose someone to flirt with, I respect you less and less.”

“What if she tells Namaire?  I live across the street, you know.”

“So what.  Did you see old Felix?  He didn’t even bat an eye at us.”

Hugo shrugged. “What can he do?  Blink twice for help?  He’s a butler.  One master is just like any other.”

Guillaume made a noncommittal noise and stared up at the marbled and gilded facade of the Namaire manor, ignoring the buzz of his friend’s irritated chatter.

-

The weeks passed.  The Concourse, Lady Villeaux’s ball, and several other balls and teas and luncheons and dinners came and went.  Hugo did not give up his candid little friendship with the girl, and the smallness of court forced Guillaume to join his friend in accompanying the Baroness of Namaire.  In the casual daytime gatherings and the more opulent nightime revels, Guillaume trailed after Hugo’s giggling coterie of old schoolmates and their paramours.  He protested illness, as well, when he could get away with it.

He could not, however, avoid Hugo and court events forever.  It wasn’t good for his reputation, and it wasn’t good for the business of his hold.  At the Montforts’ masquerade, for example, Guillaume was doing his best to afford his friend enough attention to maintain their relationship, while getting away from the crowds of young nobles (and the pretty pale blue eyes peering through a silvery mask) whenever he could.

Guillaume slinked through the Montfort mansion, his dark costume cape fluttering along the marbled halls.  The clamor of the party reached even these far reaches of the house, with smaller parties breaking away to loiter in different parlors and sitting rooms.  A loudly laughing group of his peers were occupying the large library and playing some sort of drinking game with the billiards table.  Finally, Guillaume found the small library, and the click of the door behind him sealed the room in a sudden rush of silence.

As he looked around, though, he found he was not alone.

Across the room, past the leather chairs and the golden bar and the busts of Revairan luminaries, the Baron of Namaire gazed at Guillaume.  He had not realized the baron was in attendance; Namaire rarely attended events, allowing his young bride to be tended on by her growing coterie of fans and friends.  The older man stood tall and thin, a lean figure that spoke of a gravity beyond Guillaume’s years or, frankly, capabilities.  Namaire’s lack of costume, his ascetic neatness, somehow shocked him more than any of the most ostentatious or revealing outfits swirling around the masquerade.

“Lord Comtois,” the man said, placing down the wine glass he’d been holding with a soft click.

“Baron Namaire,” Guillaume returned, bowing.

Namaire did not bow.  He continued to study the younger man.

“You and I have a matter to discuss,”the baron stated.

Guillaume collected himself.  He raised a brow. “Do we, my lord?”

Namaire stepped closer, his moves measured and his polished black shoes clipping at the parquet.  At a few paces away, he stopped.  The man really was quite tall, and his back surprisingly straight for all the white peppering his temples and his beard.  The baron’s sharp eyes, like a dagger just slightly pulled from its sheath, ran over Guillaume with an experienced detachment.

“You resent me,” Namaire said shortly.  He raised a hand when Guillaume attempted to protest. “None of that.  I have allowed this to go on long enough.  The time for intrigue and flirtation is over.  Now we speak as men.”

Guillaume bent his head. “If that is your desire, my lord.”

The baron snorted. “Did I not speak clearly?  Very well.  Keep your artifice for as long as you can.”

Namaire tilted his head back and hardened his gaze. “You resent me.  You blame me for my son’s– your friend’s – death.  You resent my marrying so soon, to replace him.  And you are taking it out on my wife.”

Guillaume swallowed.  Anger was rising in his gut, overriding all of his ingrained instinct to maintain his guile.

“ _Replace him_ ,” Guillaume choked out, laughing. “You shock me, sir.  I merely believed you heartless before.  Now I know it for truth.”

“You aren’t going to shame me with the taunts of a little boy,” Namaire shot back coolly.

“Alain was your  _son_ ,” Guillaume said, his volume rising. “He was a _good man_.  Better than all of us.  And you did nothing to stop that senseless duel.   _Nothing_.”

He laughed again, losing even the desire to regain composure. “I suppose it’s not that surprising in the end.  You never did care for him, did you?  He was  _never_ good enough for you–”

“ _Enough_ ,” Namaire barked. “You will not lecture me on my own son.”  His voice slipped low and dangerous, a rumble in its depths.

Guillaume breathed deep and tried to recover himself.  It was bad form, all around, to enter a yelling match with a respected, older nobleman.  But it had surprised him, the intensity of the anger he had held in for so many months.

He shook his head. “You practically wore your wedding suit to the funeral.” But his tone was cooler now, if no less venomous.

The baron snorted and turned his back on the younger man.  He crossed the room to the bar. “You are barely a year into your formal position as lord of the Comtois house.  You will learn soon enough that what you want in life has little to do with the demands of your position.  But I didn’t come here for a morality lesson.”

While Namaire spoke, he poured out generous splashes of liquor.  He slowly returned with two glasses, handing one to Guillaume.  His eyes were again flinty and hard on the younger man.

“Your behaviour is creating rumours,” the baron said. “Men like Hugo Lorraine are no danger.  They are so obvious, it is only to be expected.  But the way you behave around her, the way you look at her and speak to her – is being misconstrued.  You are not as subtle as you like to think.”

Guillaume’s cheek tightened. “She is a girl–”

“Yes,” Namaire said. “She is a girl.  And none of this has anything to do with her.”

The baron downed his drink and shoved the glass into Guillaume’s chest, forcing him to take it.

“You will leave this room, and you will ask her to dance.  You will smile and put on a show for all the prying eyes.  You will apologize.  And you will behave as courteously as any of those fops out there for the rest of the season.”

With that, Namaire swept past Guillaume and out the door.

-

It took a moment for Guillaume to regain himself.  He supposed the baron was correct.  He was usually quite genial with noblewomen, if not as loquacious as Hugo.  So it was probably quite true that tongues were wagging over Guillaume’s sudden coolness toward the baroness.  And it didn’t help matters that people already liked to smirk over her age and background.  It really was a wonder that Namaire hadn’t said something earlier.

He wondered what Alain would have thought about all of this.

He sighed and closed his his eyes.  After a long moment, he drank the shot the baron had poured for him, and put down both glasses.

He found her with Hugo and other acolytes of trivial conversation, idle pastimes, and alcohol.  The grotesque masks with the flickering lights and the plethora of mirrors in the ballroom came across as macabre to Guillaume.  Or perhaps it was his mood.

Inserting himself into the loose circle beside Hugo, he nodded at his acquaintances.  The baroness’s eyes, framed by a glittering half-mask, met his.  Over the charming smile meant for the prowling young men and women around them, a shift in her eyes told Guillaume that she knew what had just transpired.  She turned to the son of a marquis beside her.

“This song is always so lovely to me,” she said lightly. “It reminds me so much of Eteau’s twenty-third.”

“This is a waltz.  Isn’t the twenty-third a pavane?” the boy asked, confused.

“God above.  I’m too many sheets in the wind for anything faster than a painstaking  _crawl_.”  Some girl.

“No, the lady is correct,” Guillaume interjected, smiling easily. “It’s in the counter-melody.”

“Just so,” the baroness nodded.

“If the baroness is so fond of it,” Guillaume said, “may I ask for this dance?”

He offered his hand.

Eyes all around the circle went aslant to each other.  Ignoring them, the girl smiled her impeccable smile and accepted, sliding her little silver glove into his.  Together, they stepped to the dance floor and seamlessly weaved themselves into the whirling pattern of dance partners.

“You know, I can’t tell if you are smiling through your teeth or not; I suspect it all looks the same on you,” she said with her own smile.

“Give it a few years and you will see we’re all smiling through our teeth,” he said, sweeping her through an arching measure.

“I’m not,” she replied with sparkling eyes. “Or maybe I’m just  _inexperienced_.”

“Don’t flirt with me,” he warned her.

“That’s right.  Didn’t my husband tell you to flirt with me?”

He sighed, using the moment to smile vaguely at the room in general.  She wasn’t making this easy.

“Did you set this up?”

“Why?  So you can call me a little girl that tattles to her big bad husband?”

Guillaume exchanged glances with her.

She laughed suddenly– a natural and genuine sound that suited her.

“I don’t know why I got so angry over you,” she said lightly. “You are merely far too serious.”

“You think my concerns aren’t serious?” he asked.

Her smile softened. “No, not that.”

In a quick motion that no one other than Guillaume would have noticed, she slipped a hand around her back, somewhere in the vicinity of her great bustle.  The hand came back around and pressed something into his hand.  Round and hard, Guillaume knew exactly what it was and struggled to maintain his pleasant expression for the crowd.

“His room hasn’t been changed, you know,” she said quietly. “I found this and… Your name is engraved in it.  Anything else may take some time for my husband to– well.”

It was the pocket watch he’d given Alain several years ago.  Guillaume dropped it into his inner jacket pocket.  He was struggling to find something to say, and the voice to say it with.  She saw it in his face and changed the tenor of their dance.

“Well, Lord Comtois,” the baroness said brightly, “Am I progressing?  Am I a woman of the court yet?”

“No, not at all,” he said softly. “And you shouldn’t want to be one.”

“And yet I am one.  I will need the skills of court.  And the friends, too.”

The song came to an end, and the partners on the floor separated to bow and curtsy to one another as applause from the spectators washed over them.  Guillaume looked at her.  It wasn’t really true that she was just a girl.  He had met many her age that were infinitely sillier and empty-headed.  He felt this wasn’t the case with the baroness.  Not with the way they could meet each other’s eyes now.  She was just very young and in the bad habit of relying on her prettiness.

Guillaume drew himself up.

“Baroness,” he began.

“Please,” she smiled. “Call me Sabine.”


	2. 7kpp Week 2017: Sacrifice (Sabine/Zarad)

It wasn’t the fullness of the dark or the salt-leaden chill of the little hideaway carved into monumental red rock on the Corvali coast – it was each other, the draw of  the one beside them that pressed them close and dear. **  
**

She ran a finger over the planes of his body, over the pectorals and the ribs and the tenderness in his side.  She watched the lift and descent of his chest, the cycle of his lungs and his heart, quiet now that it was dark and they were alone.  She loved that little motion, a necessary rhythm.  Almost too small a thing to be called a motion, but still.  She hadn’t known before that you could love a thing like that so much.

The tracing of her finger met a roughness.

“This one?” she asked.

“A tempestuous yet extremely lovely Hisean captain thought it presumptuous of me to try to pay her ‘safe passage’ fees with flattery rather than financial gain,”  Zarad murmured.

She laughed, low and soft. “You do realize that it is a misconception to think everyone will be satisfied with promises of the moon and the stars.”

His own fingers found her shoulder and trailed lightly up her neck.

“I don’t know,” he said playfully. “ _Someone_ was certainly convinced.”

She ignored this.  Her fingers curled against his ribs and wriggled underneath his back to seek out another line of ropey scar tissue.

“This one?”

“One of the oldest.  When I was young and inept– I know, hard to imagine– My inadequacy of eloquence prevented me from clearing up a misunderstanding with a gentleman over his fiancée.  He was looking for my brother, but my brother was strangely absent.”

Her exploring fingers stopped.  She stretched up to look him in the eye.

“Zarad.”

He smiled at her, his gaze warm and golden.  Sighing, she reached up to curl a tendril of his loose hair around her fingers.  It was one of her favorite things to pretend to complain about: his ridiculously luxurious hair and how it took forever to fix and how it nearly occupied its own side of the bed.  Maybe one day she’d tell him how much she really loved it, how its smell spoke to her of him and made her feel safe.

His hands ran up and down her arms.

“I see you don’t have any scars,” he said lightly.

“And you’ve seen everything, have you?”

“Haven’t I?” he asked, his voice low and a smirk dancing in his eyes.

She slapped his chest without force.  Shifting, she pulled up to rest on her elbows and reveal her palms to him, letting them hover inches in front of his face.

“This,” she said as she touched the gap between thumb and pointer on the left hand, “was where I tried to grab a hot clothes iron without a cloth or glove on the handle.  This is where I nearly lost a pinkie while chopping wild carrots.  Here were chilblains from washing linens in the creek in midwinter.  And right there were cracks from my skin drying out from so much lye soap.  There was a time when we couldn’t even afford a washing woman.”

He considered her.  Then he took her hands in each of his, thoughtfully running his thumbs over them.

“But they wouldn’t catch on the finest silk now,” he said.

“Revairan cosmetics are the best in the world.  You know, I wore gloves my first season at court.  All the time.  I was embarrassed and afraid.  But I look back and think maybe I should have kept my peasant hands.  If I wasn’t going to be the one to feed and clothe and bathe my siblings, then who was?  It’s always been like that.”

He brought her hands closer, and she followed, cupping his cheeks with fine fingers.  Leaning into her touch, he brought his lips to gently press against a palm.  He held that kiss there for a long moment.

“I’m here now.  You are not alone.”

“I know.  Neither are you.”


	3. 7kpp Week 2017: Growth (Sabine/Zarad)

A knock rang outside her door and forced Sabine from her intent focus.  She snapped shut the bulky leather portfolio before her and called out, “Come in.”

She felt, rather than saw, Sayra and Ria enter on their trained servants’ feet, quiet and measured.  Sabine pulled a card from one of her desk drawers as they closed the door.

“Good evening, Lady Sabine,” they both greeted her, no doubt curtsying as well.

“Good evening.  When I finish this, can you take it to Jasper, please, Sayra?  And tell him there’s a change of plans.”

She added a flourish to her script, pressing a bit harder than usual.  The card done, she stood with it and blew across the wet ink as she finally looked at her maids.  Sayra stood some paces away, while Ria had paused, hovering, by her wardrobe.

“It’s short notice, I know,” Sabine said, “but I’d like to invite Prince Zarad to a private dinner instead of dining with the others tonight.  I’m sure Jasper has worked greater miracles before.”

“Yes, my lady,” Sayra said with her quiet assurance.  “Do you have any particular instructions for the dinner?”

“No.  As long as Zarad is there, I don’t care if we sit out in the rain with a stalk of celery each.”

Sayra took the note from her and left silently.  Sabine turned to Ria, who stared back with light concern.

“The dark blue jacquard, dear,” she told the girl, moving to the mirror in the dressing area.  She frowned and turned to look herself up and down, hands running down her curves.

“I suppose I ought to eat more celery anyway,” Sabine sighed, her voice sour.

Ria had her out of her day dress and into an evening gown with practiced speed.  Soon after, Sayra returned with Jasper.

“His Highness accepts your invitation with pleasure,” the butler said.  He spoke with his usual professional coolness, but Sabine could tell he and Sayra had been talking by the way he studied her.  He handed her a card with Zarad’s seal.  She stared at it for a moment, running her thumb over the wax seal, until she glanced up at the portfolio still sitting on her desk.  Jaw twitching, she lay the card down unopened.

“Did you have trouble arranging things?” she asked Jasper lightly, donning her usual society smile.

“Nothing insurmountable, my lady,” he answered.

She nodded.  She would have to thank him properly tomorrow, as well as apologize to the girls.

-

“I see I shall have to invest in a smelling salt mine– do smelling salts even come from a mine?  Nevermind.  I must find some way or other to have some on hand at all times when dealing with you, because, frankly, your behavior is becoming more and more shocking.”

Zarad swept into the room with his usual grace and teasing statements.

“Really.  A sudden, desperate summons!  My maid was swooning!” he exclaimed, grinning as he bowed to her.

“Oh?” Sabine said.  She remained seated. “And you, kind soul that you are, caught her.  Tucked her pretty little head right into your bosom.”

“I do have a nice bosom,” Zarad agreed. “But no fear, my dove.  I will always make room for you on it.”

“That’s sweet of you,” she replied.

Something in her tone, in the way she cut short the banter, caused Zarad to study her.  He paused, but if he was going to say something it was interrupted by the entry of the soup course through the door.  Between them grew an uncomfortable silence peppered with the soft clinks of the servers laying down their dishes.  Sabine sipped at the wine and avoided his eyes.

When they were alone again (or as alone as anyone on this isle could be), Zarad cleared his throat.

“I certainly have been waiting for the day you’d be dazzled into silence with my mere presence,” he said lightly. “But I do so prefer to hear my praises on your tongue.”

She studied him for a moment.  He was smiling, but for the first time since she’d known him, he seemed nervous.  Neither of them touched the soup.

“Did you get a chance to look at my accounts I sent over?” she finally said.

Zarad raised a brow. “I glanced over them.  Very neat and tidy.”

She stared at him. “That’s all you have to say?”

“I’m not sure what’s the matter, Sabine,” Zarad said slowly.

“Your books are a complete mess,” she said sharply.

Now that their engagement was solidifying, the time to address the business aspect of marriage had come.  Both of them had collected their records to send to the other with an appointment scheduled later to go over the details of consolidating the households.  However, when Sabine had seen the disorganized and haphazard mix of receipts and incomplete documentation in the portfolio now sitting on her desk, she had not been able to remain patient.

She threw the napkin on her lap back onto the table where it dipped sadly into the soup.  She straightened to stare fully at him, shoulders stiff and coiled with tension.

“Where should I  _even_ start?” she asked. “For one, your household currently subsists on your imperial stipend.  In entirety.  Which would not be terrible if your rate of spending did not consistently outstrip that very generous amount year after year.  Of course, I might be unfairly forgetting your one other source of income: personal loans from your friends.  The funds from which seem to trickle around to pay off  _other_ personal loans.”

Zarad said nothing as she continued this tirade, his usual smirk gone and nothing floating up to the surface to replace it.  His walls had crashed down, his face blank.  Even if he attempted to say anything, she did not allow it.

“Perhaps you might defend your expenditures?” Sabine asked, choking out an insincere laugh. “Gambling dens, clubhouses, the races, parties, and  _loans_.  My word, if you charged interest at least you could register as a bank.  But that would require to you to actually collect on those loans.  The current outstanding debt owed to you is  _obscene_.  The debts that  _you_ owe?  It doesn’t bear polite conversation.”

She snorted and shook her head. “Really.  Heavens know I have never exactly lived frugally, but I certainly don’t go beyond my means.  And you have not made a single wise investment since you reached your majority.  There are no ships sponsored, no land bought, no– no  _anything_.  For god’s sake, you don’t even use a double-entry booking system.”

“I didn’t realize my imagined solvency was what attracted you so to me in the first place,” Zarad said coolly.  His expression remained blank, but his eyes were retreating further and further away.

Sabine raised her hand dismissively. “Do not give me that.  That is  _not_ what this is about.”

“No?  It seems exactly what it’s about.”

“I have my hold to think of,”she said acidly. “My tenants.  Even with my returns from Namaire and all of my investments, at the growing rate of your spending my wealth would be bankrupted within ten years.  I’d have to sell the barony– and I will not do that.  Not for anyone.”

Zarad’s jaw clenched as he looked down, idly smoothing out his robes across his lap.

“Well, my lady, you certainly have a route to prevent such a tragedy.”

Sabine suddenly stood, her chair screeching behind her.  Her voice turned tight and rough and touched with tremors.

“For years, I watched my father do this to his family.  I will  _not_ see my future children go through what my siblings and I did.”

With that, she jerked away from the table and turned away.  Realization crashed onto Zarad’s face, and he shot to his feet.

“Sabine, wait–”

“No.”

“Listen to me–”

At that moment, the door to the private dining room silently opened and Jasper entered.

Thus, the butler’s pointed stare deflated the tension between them, and they parted in silence without meeting the other’s gaze.

-

Sabine dismissed Jasper and told him not to send in the girls to help her undress.  She could manage on her own.  He seemed to want to say something, but at her expression he merely nodded his assent.

She slumped at her vanity and impatiently pulled out her dangling earrings, tossing them down.  Her reflection in the mirror stared back at her.  She wasn’t seventeen anymore.  How long could she keep doing this?  She turned away from the mirror.

Sabine stood and crossed the room to a trunk storing various gifts and some books.  She pulled out a bottle of authentic Revairan red another delegate had given her.  As she stood at her writing desk and used the letter opener from Ana to pull out the wine’s cork, the leather portfolio and the unopened card sitting on it caught her eye.

Having no glasses at hand, she took a swig straight from the bottle and stared at the source of her current dilemma.  Sighing, she took the portfolio and the wine to her sitting area, kicking off her slippers along the way.  She popped open the portfolio.

It was ridiculous.  Crumpled up receipts were crammed into the wrong year’s records, contracts involving exorbitant sums were wadded up and stained, the records wandered around mathematically in lazy routes and sometimes fell off into obscurity.  Really, if he wasn’t good with finances, that was fine, but he was completely capable of hiring someone who  _could_ handle it.

She nursed the wine.

“I mean, who in the world are all these people?” she sighed.

Many of the personal loans were to other nobles in the Corvali court, and she either knew of them by name or could guess with her own familiarity with the different holdings and positions in Corval.  But so many others were unknown to her.  And the justification for the exchanges were scrawled in the margins as ‘seed money for Jadet’s mole trainer,’ ‘Ulden proved he could get drunker than a donkey,’ ‘twinkle toes,’ etcetera.

Suddenly, Sabine sat up.  

She frowned, putting the bottle down.  Her fingers flew through the tattered pages of the portfolio.  There was a certain loose thread.  And as she flipped through the annotations and the figures, she pulled on this loose thread.  The more she pulled on it, the more she began to unravel a pattern she had not seen before.  A logic woven coyly through the apparent disarray of the accounts.

Sabine sat back, breathing deep and closing her eyes.

“They’re fake,” she said softly. “These books are fake.”

She shoved the portfolio off her lap, bits of paper fluttering to the floor.  Stumbling a bit, she went to the desk and snatched up Zarad’s card.

_As the stars must follow the lovely glow of the moon, so I must follow your every dear command._

_Ever yours,_

_Zarad_

Overwhelmed, Sabine put down the card and held herself against the desk’s surface.

“My god,” she groaned. “I am an  _idiot_.”

She banged her head against the desk.

-

“My lady.  _My lady_.”

Sabine shot upright.

“What, what?” she croaked.

Jasper stood at the foot of her bed, eyeing her.  

Her head pounding, Sabine peered around.  She was still dressed, and had somehow ended up on her bed with a good portion of the portfolio’s contents surrounding her on the coverlet.  In fact, her room’s floor was littered everywhere with scraps of paper.  The first bottle of wine was rolling around, empty, beside her while a second one sat opened on her nightstand.

“Uhm,” Sabine murmured, putting a hand to her head. “Jasper…”

The butler shifted.  Almost imperceptibly, he gentled his tone. “Shall I have a bath drawn for you, my lady?”

“No,” she cleared her throat and looked up at him properly. “I have something I need to do.  Right away.  I can dress myself.  I’ll need all this cleaned up, though.”

She gestured around her.

“Someone discreet, please,” she added softly.

Jasper nodded and gave her a hand as she pushed off the bed.  He looked her in the eye.

“I shall take care of it myself, Lady Sabine.”

She squeezed his hand for a moment. “Thank you.  I will need that bath when I come back.”

“Of course.”

As he exited silently, she went to the mirror to see the damage.  Good lord.  She sighed.  Today was not going to be easy.

-

After untangling some of the worst snags in her half-undone hair, washing away the streaks of kohl on her cheeks, and throwing on a new dress, Sabine went on a search.

She found him in the gardens, tucked away in a small shady corner that smelled of dew and jonquils.

It was a rare thing that she could find him so quickly when it seemed the norm for him to dissipate like mist whenever her thoughts turned to him.  Perhaps– and she may frankly be flattering herself with this notion– but perhaps he had sensed the direction of her heart’s change overnight.  It would be nice to think so.

He watched her approach with quiet eyes.  He seemed much the same except for the lack of mirth and the quietude.  And it gutted her that she was the cause of this change.

At a few paces away she stopped.  She gestured behind him to the ornate stone bench set against a smooth-faced hedge.

“May we sit?” Sabine asked.

“By all means,” Zarad replied.

They sat down in tense silence, but she did not allow the tension to last overlong, drawing herself up and clearing her throat.

“I owe you an apology,” she said, turning slightly to look him in the eye.

He gazed back.  There was a shift in his expression.  Relief, uncertainty, contrition: all of these or maybe none and something she couldn’t define at all.  Anxiety leaped into her throat.  She leaned closer.

“Zarad, I’ve been an idiot.  An absolute idiot.  I did not see your books for what they were.”

Her hand nervously swept a curl from her face, but she forced herself to keep her eyes on his.

“Even so, I should not have overreacted the way I did.  I should have had faith in you and discussed it with you like an adult.  Not fly off into a rage.  I should have trusted you,” she said, her throat tightening. “I feel as if I’ve hurt you, and I am sick over it.  I am sorry.”

Zarad’s gaze dropped.  He raised a hand to shield his eyes.  His mouth worked around several emotions, words that wouldn’t come, until he put on a flimsy smile to cough out an awkward laugh.

“Sabine, how do you do this?  Where did you even come from?  What horrible, wonderful fairy magicked you into my life?”

She remained silent, watching him.  He finally looked up.

He shook his head. “I should have apologized first.  I was the first to show you distrust.”

He pulled a slim dark volume from somewhere, a sleight of hand that she hadn’t caught.

“I should have given you this to begin with,” he said quietly, pushing it into her hands. “I could say that the habits of the Corvali court are hard to forget, but that would be making an excuse.  The truth is I was careless and thoughtless.  I didn’t think about the way you would think of this money– not just the money, but the partnership we should be building.”

She did not open the book, running a hand over it slowly. “Or perhaps I am just not as clever as you may have believed me.  Did you think I would figure it out quicker?”

“Sabine, that’s not true.  And you shouldn’t have  _had_ to figure it out, anyway,” he said firmly.  He sighed and adjusted his robes. “It’s a… new feeling.  Wanting to trust someone completely, wanting to be trusted completely.  Hiding all your cards– like your money and what you’re doing with it– is just second nature at home.  Really, it’s the difference between surviving and…”

He shrugged.

“I am sorry.  I should have considered your feelings more.”

She smiled and slipped a hand into his.  “We’ve both behaved badly.”

He smiled back and his fingers wrapped around hers to squeeze lightly.  They stayed like that for a moment, simply enjoying the rarity of a moment to themselves.  The intimacy of knowing each other better, and committing themselves again to the idea of  _them_.

After a while, Sabine pulled her hand from his and flipped open the slim volume he’d given her.

“Now,” she said brightly, “Let’s have a look.”

She carefully inspected the records, following columns of figures with her finger lightly ghosting down the page.  Zarad watched her, a smile tugging at his lips.  As she poured over the numbers, her brow arched up and she made little sounds of interest.

“You know,” Zarad said musingly, “You’re very attractive when you’re angry.”

She glanced at him and rolled her eyes.  Her attention drew back to the book.

“This apologizing thing is quite useful,” he went on. “If I ever want to see that lovely visage of you again, thunderous and stormy like the righteous heavens, I can just apologize to put things back in order.”

“Why don’t you try it sometime and we’ll see?” Sabine said, eyes on the ledger, but her tone a little dangerous with too much sweetness.

“Didn’t we already have a discussion about open-ended invitations?”

“Yes,” she said, pulling her head up. “You invite too many of them.”  Shutting the book, she slapped it into his chest.

“If these numbers are true, then I’m impressed.”

“So it  _was_ my imagined solvency that led you to me.  Madam, you are shamelessly using me.”

“Not the amount,” she said with mock-hauteur. “The finesse and skill with which the amount was handled.”

“And the double entry system?”

“Quite tidy.”

“Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

She sighed in exasperation and reached up with both her hands to cradle his face.

“Yes, Your Highness.  You are very handsome and dashing and very, very intelligent,” she cooed in grinning his face. “You must be the smartest creature I’ve ever met.  Wonderful and splendid in every aspect.  From the glossy curled top of your head to your precious little piggies.”

A snort of laughter sputtered behind her.

Sabine leapt to her feet, startled.  Hamin and Clarmont stood only a few paces away, having come upon them with Sabine completely unaware.  Beside her, Zarad bent over, helpless with laughter.

“ _You_ –” she started, irritated.

She stopped, turned her back on him, and curtsied to the sudden intruders.

“My lords,” she said coolly.

Clarmont recovered his surprise, and even minimised his amusement by biting on his lip, and returned to her a proper bow.  Hamin, however, was sniggering too much to manage more than an awkward bend.

“What was that, Sabine, p-precious little piggies?” Hamin gasped out.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied calmly.

“Don’t be like that, we’re friends, right?” Hamin said, his grin far too wide for her liking.

“Well, I’m sure I’d only be friends with gentlemen.  And gentlemen would surely never eavesdrop on a private conversation.”

Clarmont elbowed Hamin to keep him quiet and smiled at her. “You are too correct, Lady Sabine.  We’ve been unpardonably rude.”

Zarad cleared his throat. “That’s right.  Run along so she can continue wooing my precious little piggies.”

Both Hamin and Zarad howled.

“I’m done with this,” Sabine snapped. “And I’m done with you.  I’m not marrying you.”

She whirled away and began marching back toward the castle.  Zarad followed easily with his wider stride.

“Again?  Wait, Sabine, I apologize!  At least let me walk you back, I can tell you’re hungover.”

“How dare you!  I am a lady.  I don’t get  _hungover_.”

He laughed, and she took his arm, trying and not very much succeeding at hiding her own smile.

 


	4. 7kpp Week 2017: Hope (Sabine/Zarad)

She falls in love a hundred times a day. **  
**

He watches her do it sometimes.  Watches the way her eyes catch on a spoonful of clotted cream, the way she lets a slow spreading smile send her thanks to a servant girl, the way her pretty fingers tenderly smooth out the silk of her skirt.

Occasionally she stops to look at a painting and in her eyes he finds she is somewhere that he can not follow.  When she meets a friend, it doesn’t matter if they spoke an hour past or a year: she embraces them, if not physically then in the warmth of her heart, and delights in their every response, trivial or not.

He knows, too, that she fell in love (or something like that) in the conventional sense many times back home.  Not the way he himself pretends it.  But in truth.  He is envious.  Not of those faceless lovers, but of  _her_.  That she could entrust all of herself to these people with such ease.

It astounds him sometimes– the depth of his anger and his hatred.  Sometimes when he is flirting with some lovely young thing with dimples, he wants to scream at her that he knows she’s being paid by his brother.  That he knows she is a stupid, blind-striking fool, like a snake with its head cut off.  Sometimes when he is forced to play these political games and pretend they are normal and not ridiculously convoluted and unnecessarily cruel– he wants to flip tables, smash furniture,  _anything_.  Sometimes when he attends a family dinner he wants to slice open half the guest list.

One hundred and sixty-two.  Three.  One.

Those were the numbers he gave her, and if he asked, he knew she would give him a set of numbers with an entirely different balance.  It drives him a little mad.  Revaire is not so different from Corval; one still has to be on guard to survive.  Finally, he asked her one time.  How could she have trusted them, weren’t there consequences?

Sabine smiled and said, “What’s this?  The impassioned advocate for flirtation suddenly stricken by a case of prudishness?  Or even, dare I say it,  _jealousy_?”

“Sabine,” Zarad said, quietly and with a smile.

The teasing glint in her eyes faltered for a moment, and she really looked at him.  Then she smiled again, but softer.

“My mother told me this growing up,” she said as she leaned forward and took his hand, “The world is wide and full, and no one will give it to you.  You have to take it yourself.  Never apologize for yourself.  Make as many mistakes as you can and never ever live with regrets.  Never use self-deprecating humor, and always, always be willing to take a risk.”

“In that order?”

“Well, it’s the gist, anyway.”

He ran a thumb over her knuckles. “Weren’t you hurt, though?”

“Yes, many times,” Sabine said easily. “I’ve spent a fair amount of feelings, energy, time, and money on fixing my own messes.  I’m still paying for a young barrister to complete his education at the moment.  I think he’s ready to forgive me, though.  My wallet is grateful.”

He was silent, and she placed her other hand over his.

“Zarad.  I’ve never regretted any of my actions.  Why should I?  True, not all of them were good decisions or led to happy endings.  But sometimes, if you look hard enough, if you try hard enough…”

She lifted her fingers to sweep a lock of hair out of his eyes.  She smiled.

“Sometimes you find what you were looking for all along.”

And that is the story of how she taught him the difference between surviving and living.


	5. 7kpp Week 2017: Future (Sabine/Zarad)

He was awake and halfway out of bed before the knock even cracked outside the door.  Or perhaps it merely seemed so, since that realm between sleeping and waking can be just as strange as the realm of dreams at times.  What  _is_ is only muddled impression, half-remembered, and never occurring at the point you think it does. **  
**

The knock cracked again, urgently, and Zarad went to the door with his naked blade held behind him where she could see it glowing in the moonlight.  The door opened a sliver, and a hissed exchange passed through that blinding splinter of light intruding from the antechamber.

Sabine pulled herself up, and slid her legs over the edge of the bed.  Slowly.  She was always doing things so slowly these days.  She pushed herself up off the warm and soft mattress into the coolness of the night.  As she pulled on her damask morning robe with the mink collar, Zarad finished his conversation.  He stood at the door looking back at her.  He held out a hand.

“Sabine.”

She went to him, taking his hand in hers.  The rounded weight of her stomach pressed between them.  She studied him calmly and saw, cast into glaring starkness by the open door’s light, the liquid brightness of his large eyes, the velvety lashes, and the hardness in his mouth.  Outside in the courtyard, and in the far reaches of the house, people were stirring.  Businesslike, unrushed, but stirring with purpose and hard boots and whispered gravity.

She squeezed his hand, and he nodded.

They left the bedroom, hand in hand, and guards quietly waiting outside fell in line around them.  It was only a few paces from their door, across the antechamber tiles, and into their personal sitting room, but still.  Zarad would make no mistakes tonight.

In the sitting room, the various members of their faction, if their friends and valued business partners could be called a ‘faction,’ stood or sat waiting for them.  Their quiet conversations died as Zarad and Sabine entered.  She saw that Victoire had brought the children, and went to them.

Zarad smiled easily at the room. “Forgive our lateness.  Seems like usual, we are last to be told.  I’m not ungrateful; she does treasure my beauty sleep.”

A quiet titter.  More to humor and comfort him than stemming from their own amusement.  Such would be the tenor of the night.

As Sabine swept the boy’s curls out of his eyes, bright with excitement, and gazed at the girl drowsing in the maid’s arms, Zarad went to Jaer, his principal informant for the inner palace.  Another hissed conversation made lucent by the harshness of light not meant for these small hours.  As she watched the line of his bare back constrict with tension, she shifted.  A servant, armed to the teeth, came at her beckoning.

“Get a robe for him,” she said softly. “The amethyst with blue.”

She stood, and crossed the room to him.  Jaer quieted and bent his head in respect.  As she slipped her arm into Zarad’s, the other man retreated.  Zarad held her and sighed.

“We knew this might happen,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “But not– not so soon.  Not…”

“Not when the children are so young?  Not when the party’s only just consolidated?  Not when the children are just barely in their majority?   Not when we’ve retired, and only have so much time to ourselves?” she asked, staring up into his eyes. “It’s never going to be the right time and there’s always going to be too much to lose, love. We simply have to always win.”

“Simply that, huh?” he asked, grinning unenthusiastically. “You’re awfully calm.”

“I’m too pregnant to panic.  I only have time to plan for the future.”

He nodded and looked down.  His throat worked over undefined emotions and words.  She stretched up to kiss him lightly.

“Zarad,” she whispered into his lips. “You have to pull yourself together.  The imperial messenger will be here any minute.”

He stared back at her.  Then he pulled her in again, and kissed her– quick and full and expressing more than he could say.  He stepped back.  The servant hovered nearby, carefully holding the robe Sabine had requested.  Zarad took it from him, sliding it smoothly over his shoulders.  He retook her hand, and led her to the settee where the maid sat with the children.  He took the girl into his arms, and she took the boy into her lap.  And they sat together, washed in shadow and light and saturated silk, their family, waiting.


	6. An Alternate Meeting (Sabine/OC, kinda Sabine/Zarad)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to write out an alternate meeting between Zarad and Sabine. And I also wanted to work with Guillaume (from Past) more, and ngl I just wanted to be self-indulgent and write about fancy shit. 8))

“Your Highness,” the man said, bowing gracefully and within perfect protocol. **  
**

He was tall, dark-complected and neat in appearance.  A trim-fitting suit with understated trimmings and a somewhat somber coloring spoke to good taste, good blood, and a slightly intolerant spirit.  Just the type Zarad tended to grate on.

Zarad smiled widely. “Please, ambassador.  You are too polite; it’s your coach, after all.”

The man bent his head. “You honor me, Your Highness, but I am merely an under-ambassador.  And of course I welcome your company.”

“As I understand, it’s the lady of Namaire’s welcome I should be begging tonight,” Zarad said. “I am intruding, after all.”

At this, under-ambassador Lord Guillaume Comtois finally cracked a wry smile. “Trust me, Highness.  She will be delighted at your presence.”

At Zarad’s side, the under-under-ambassador from the Corvali embassy in Revaire Lucre Mantova clapped his hands and grinned.

“Alright,” Lucre said. “Now introductions are out of the way, let’s head out, shall we?”

Zarad was allowed to enter first (rank and beauty before all else, as someone has probably said once somewhere), with Lord Guillaume and Lucre following after.  The conversation was soon quickly and cheerfully taken in hand by Lucre, towards the rumour he’d heard that Didier would be present that evening.  It was, after all, the main reason Lucre had secretly fudged his prince’s itinerary so that he could fit in a party tonight.  Without the pretense of the imperial Prince Zarad wishing very much to meet the playwright Didier, Lucre would probably have not been able to convince Lord Guillaume to bring him along; they knew each other from the diplomatic corps, but were not particularly well-acquainted.

Zarad didn’t mind too much.  Lucre was pleasant and fun, and by all accounts the recently widowed Baroness of Namaire had all sorts of interesting people at her gatherings.  And interesting people tended to have interesting talk, and Zarad survived on such snippets of information, misinformation, and blatant lies.  He wasn’t particularly curious about Didier, but he could make passing smalltalk about the man’s work.

Which he did, at length, with the two other young noblemen, as the ride lasted for some time; their destination lay in the rolling hills outside the capital, a second estate separate from the city manor and the main chateau in the seat of the Namaire barony.  Useful for time spent in the city during the social season when the weather became particularly hot and the streets, as a result, particularly foul.

The sun sat low in the sky by the time the coach clattered to a halt outside a manor nestled into a hillside with a lovely view of a little lake.  Coachmen descended upon them, their charge led by a butler, and soon they were released into the warm late afternoon air.  The three were about to be ushered across the pebbled front court into the house, when some yelling from the gate behind them stopped them.  They turned to watch, curiously, as a single rider careened into the inner yard towards them.

The horse pulled up abruptly, and a young man dismounted, throwing his reigns at a servant.  Face splotchy and breath coming hard, the man’s simple and student-ish clothes hung from him crookedly.

Lord Guillaume stepped forward, brow raised. “Caius–”

“Sirs,” the young man said, barely looking at them before striding at a near run into the manor.

Lord Guillaume huffed a little, then glanced at Zarad.  He bowed to the prince.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness.  That was Caius, a prominent merchant’s son and a student of the law.  A friend of the Baroness.  He’s usually much more polite.”

“What is our youth for, other than amnesty from protocol on occasion,” Zarad smiled winningly. “The passions of springtime.”

Lord Guillaume’s handsome face did not register a bit of offense at the prince’s words. “As you say, Highness.”

“Shall we go in?” Lucre offered hopefully.

Lord Guillaume gestured them ahead.

A butler led them through the airy halls of the villa, perfumed by the soft scents of an abundance of fresh flowers in every room.  Finally, they entered a broad and deep room with sitting areas at the edges occupied with over two dozen lords and ladies.  An apparent makeshift stage occupied the distant end of the room, with a semicircle of chairs acting as the empty audience.  Chatter, clinking glasses, and light laughter scented the air along with the wafts of cake, champagne, and hors d'oeuvres.

The butler announced them, and retreated quietly.  A new wave of whispers and side glances accompanied their entry.  Or rather, Zarad’s.  He smoldered appropriately for his audience.  A thread of giggling wove around the room.

While gesturing for the prince to have a seat at an unoccupied settee, Lord Guillaume frowned around at the room.  He was looking for the hostess, apparently, as she had not greeted them.  A man in a emerald half-cape with a matching damask cravat caught the Revairan dignitary’s eye.  He crossed the room to them.

“My Lord Comtois,” the man said, bowing.

“Maestro,” Lord Guillaume returned the greeting. “Your Highness, this is Mikkel Didier, playwright.  Didier, his highness–”

“Come,” Zarad interrupted. “It’s Zarad.  If you get started on all those titles, I won’t have near enough time to strongarm the maestro about his newest work.”

Lucre interjected excitedly, “It’s an honor, sir.  I’m Lucre Mantova.  Aide in the Corvali embassy.  I am a huge fan.”

“I am a chronic victim of my own ego, my lords,” Didier said with a smile. “Nothing soothes it like meeting a fan.”

“I  _suspected_ we would get along,” Zarad said conspiratorially.

“What is the stage setup for?” Lucre asked, hope beyond hope in his eyes.

“A gift for Sabine– Baroness Namaire,” Didier said.  He glanced at Lord Guillaume. “Who will, I’m sure, be terribly distressed to have been so rude as to miss greeting Your Highness as you came in.”

“Politeness is the last thing I wish from a lovely lady,” Zarad said. “As I have heard she certainly is.”

The playwright nodded. “She is.  Quite lovely in every aspect.  I am quite grateful to her.  One hopes, when starting with starry-eyed romantic notions, that one’s work will be enough to fill seats in the theatre.  But without the influence and benevolence of patrons like the Baroness, I would be a mere street hawker and not the wordsmith I pretend to.”

“I find I have more and more in common with you every second,” Zarad laughed. “Without my imperial parents, I find I would be a mere penny illusionist, and not the prince _I_  pretend to.”

Didier chuckled. “Just so.”

They continued on chatting, Zarad and Didier quipping at one another with Lucre poking about for hints about this or that play.  All the while, Lord Guillaume remained mostly silent but for a few polite additions.  They started on drinks.  It was another third of a candlemark before the doors to the room reopened.

“Guillaume Comtois,  _you are late_!”

A young woman stood in the doorway, pointing accusingly at the man.  As the rumours said: she was lovely.  Dark-haired and tawny, and wearing a gown of a slender yet modest cut that emphasized her figure.

Red velvet.

Lord Guillaume stood, the party’s chatter quieting a bit, and approached her.

“Sabine–”

“No, I don’t want to hear it,” the baroness stated, holding up her hand. “Unpardonable.  You can walk right out the way you came in.”

Despite her words, she gave her hand to the under-ambassador to bow over.

She continued, her eyes sparking, “Imagine my agitation, my  _hurt_ , as I languished here without you.  Unloved and unattended.”

He gave her a severe look. “I highly doubt that is true.  Even if Didier wasn’t here, I spotted no less than twenty of those poor souls you’ve  _bewitched_ somehow.”

The group laughed and calls went out to ‘set him out on his saddlebags’ and ‘spare no quarter, darling!’  She laughed and traded cheek kisses with Lord Guillaume.

“You and Agnes Rossi– I don’t know why I even bother,” the Baroness said, taking his arm.

“She’s not here?”

“ _No_ ,” she said, mock-scandalized, “And she promised me a painting!  These days, it’s nothing but cons and thieves.”

“Speaking of,” Zarad commented lightly as they approached him.

“Your Highness, may I introduce you to Baroness Sabine of Namaire.  Sabine, Prince Zarad of Corval.”

She curtsied at Lord Guillaume’s introduction, which Zarad returned with an extravagant bow.  He took her hand and kissed it with exaggerated tenderness.

“The whole city abounds with songs of your praises, my lady,” Zarad said. “I see now they’re all terribly tone-deaf and can’t even hum half of what is true.”

Smiling, the Baroness eyed him, then said aside to Lord Guillaume, “A Corvali prince?  It’s not a painting, but I suppose it’ll do.”

“I’m afraid being a painting is a bit beyond me,” the prince admitted. “But I’m sure I could better tell of your graces than any mirror, my lady.”

She laughed outright. “I look forward to it, Your Highness.  But come, I have duties as a hostess, and you are going to help me with them.”

She slipped easily from Lord Guillaume’s arm to Zarad’s.  She led him around the room, introducing him to the various nobles and artists and dignitaries drinking her wine and eating her sweetmeats.  Revairans were an interesting lot.  Nothing kills a Revairan like another Revairan, they say.  But underneath those deadly artifices and the rank fear, he sometimes found that there were sparks of desperation for life.  A sincere warmth and love just dying for any outlet, any person to project onto.  Such were the Baroness’s guests.

But more curious was the student, Caius.  Zarad had seen, from the corner of his eye, as the young man entered the room quietly and shortly after the Baroness came in.  When she and the prince finally came around to him, silently drinking a glass of wine, the student had the composure to at least look sheepish.

“And this is Caius Agramont, earning his doctorate currently at the royal university.  He has a very promising career ahead of him,” the Baroness stated with charm.

“My apologies, Your Highness,” Caius Agramont said. “I was beyond rude earlier.” He bowed.

“You’ve met?” she said, raising a brow.

“In the only way that men of the law should meet others,” Zarad said, with smiling magnanimity. “Briefly, and unlittered with excessive wording.”

The student bowed. “You are too kind.”

Zarad nodded, and allowed the Baroness to hustle him along.  Soon, she had him properly acquainted with her entire guest list.  When Didier caught her eye and gestured toward her, Zarad found himself deposited in the care of a pretty young pianist whose pretty little fingers had a habit of ghosting across his silken sleeve.  Soon, the chime of a spoon against a glass rang out, and the room quieted.

“Thank you,” said the Baroness, standing in the middle of the room and gazing at them all. “Now that I have your attention, I’d like to reveal the little surprise Didier has promised us all tonight.  The Chancellor’s Men themselves are here– yes, ladies, Misters Pentius and Hattier in the flesh–” A waft of giggling arose. “They are here to perform a brand new, never before staged scene from his new play.”

The group immediately began chattering excitedly.  Servants herded them all into the little makeshift audience, taking their empty glasses and giving them new ones.  Zarad found himself wedged between Lucre and the pianist.  Lucre was practically vibrating with his excitement and his rhetorical exclamations about his own excitement.  The pianist, between Zarad’s encouraging smolders and her own confidence that she wasn’t making any mistakes, made the mistake of letting slip a few names of interested parties for her sponsorship within the Revairan royal cabal.

Between all this, Didier’s company of actors strode in, decked from head to toe in colorful, elaborate costumes and transformed the room into a faraway land, a faraway time.  It was a spin on an old story, that had roots in several countries, in different forms.  The familiar characters given flesh and soul through the cadences of Didier’s poetry and the feelings of the actors, bared as they had been by the costumes and the makeup and the pageantry.

When the scene finished, the playwright stood to applause and took centerstage.

“Thank you,” he said amongst the babble of adoration. “Please– no, I’m afraid that is all tonight, my lord.  The full piece shall be played in the usual place within the month, which I’m sure you knew already.  No, I must be firm.  But–  _But_ ,” He held up his hands to quiet them. “As consolation, I’d like to take the stage with a part that I used to play, with my small skills, such as they are.”

“Oh, Mikkel, no,” the Baroness said, cutting the quiet. “Oh, you  _can’t_.  My  _makeup_.”

A thread of laughter wound about the little audience.

Zarad worried that Lucre beside him would literally combust.  Before writing for the stage, Mikkel Didier once walked the thespians’ planks himself, and the greatest of his parts has always reportedly been that of the tragic hero Janid from the same-titled play from antiquity.  Especially that of the final soliloquy wherein he declaims his mistakes and the wrongs he committed against his brother and his country, and resigns himself to a death that he believes a just punishment.  It was a piece widely considered the height of Old Revairan literature.

Zarad shifted to pay better attention.  There would be no small number of theater fans at home that would abuse him most frightfully if he did not provide every detail of this.  A certain aunt, for example.

“Please continue, Maestro,” Zarad called out. “I always find the moved tears of ladies beyond beautiful, even more so when those tears fall upon my shoulder.”

Didier bowed with a flourish. “My apologies, Baroness.  Rank and good manners dictate I go on.”

And he did.

It wasn’t just the perfect structure of the stanzas and the beauty of the particular translation from Old Revairan that Didier had chosen.  The timing, the quiet force, and the masterful control of Didier’s performance spoke of him as more than just a master of his art; the man would no doubt last through time as a singular genius without rival.

Zarad would not be exaggerating when he later told the story of the night, and described how there were far fewer dry eyes than wet among them.  When he glanced down the row he sat in, wedged inbetween the unabashedly sobbing Lucre and the quietly damp-eyed pianist, Zarad saw that the Baroness was indeed ruining her makeup.  Her hand hovered with a forgotten handkerchief, her eyes, spilling tears, yet rapt upon the declaiming playwright.

For a while, Zarad amused himself by picking out which of the guests were genuinely crying, and which were putting on for their peers around them (he suspected the hostess was not putting on; or she was very skilled indeed).  And then Zarad caught, from the corner of his eye, the student Caius a few rows back.  While all eyes were pinned to the stage, a single pair stared, transfixed, at the Baroness of Namaire.  The young lawyer had something in his face that Zarad had not seen often before, and which he was hardly accustomed to seeing in the faces of those who relied on half-truths and clever turns of phrases to protect themselves.  An honesty that Zarad was not sure what to make of.

The soliloquy ended, and applause followed.  The Baroness stood, dabbing at her eyes and smiling wetly.

“Bravo, darling,” she said loudly. “Small skills, indeed.  Every year you grow more and more shameless with your modesty.”

Didier bowed to her. “I am but a humble entertainer, subject to the whims of the audience.”

“Well.  I’m sure we all have much to say on the performances we were just given, but perhaps the conversations would be better served over dinner.  Shall we–”

At that moment, a woman dressed in a frock coat and breeches entered with a servant announcing her as the absent Agnes Rossi and the large covered object following her in as the promised painting.  A landscape of a purple heath done in a very modern manner, with harsh and hurried strokes of paint and a tumult of vivid feeling.  The gathering ooh’d and aah’d appropriately, the Baroness sighing with a smile and forgiving Rossi for her tardiness.

With the addition of the artist, the servants of the manor again herded the party of nobility, artists, and the acting troupe into the dining room.  It was a piece of work, that dining room.  Lined with windows black with night and warm with infinite candles.  The gilding and the mirrors and the crisp creases in the white linens.  An under-butler corralled Zarad to his spot, and he found himself seated in the place of honor next to the Baroness to her right, with Lord Guillaume Comtois to her left.

Their conversation began at the soup course with Didier and the Chancellor’s Men, and the Baroness pointed out, with a conspiratorial undertone, that one of the actors had slurred and improvised his way through several lines that she had good authority were completely different on paper.  The actor had changed the meaning and tenor of his part, and no doubt would receive a tongue lashing from Didier later.

“I love Didier, but sometimes he is a terrible brown noser with my type, and an absolute beast with his actors.  He means well, though,” she said softly.

“He is a man that knows exactly what he wants and how to get it,” Lord Guillaume said.

“He certainly didn’t become the artist he is by being nice,” the Baroness added.

During the fish course, Zarad lamented to the Baroness the competition for the attention of all the pretty ladies of at her table: the actors Pentius and Hattier seemed to be drawing every single feminine eye, with the girls leaning almost indecorously over their plates to catch better looks.  He was hinting about their presence itself.  It was a rare thing that nobility would consent to break bread with  _actors_ , those strange creatures meant to be looked at in these social heights and then shuffled off when the looking was done with.

The Baroness did not take the bait, and merely made comments on the social spheres through which she knew Corvali actors tread.

And then, during the entrée she leaned toward him with another of those enticing conspiratorial whispers.

“Well, Your Highness, have you guessed yet who is the royal  _friend_ among my acquaintances?”

Zarad raised a brow. “You assume I’ve been looking?”

“Oh, I know it.  For one thing, you haven’t had that look on your face once this evening.  Foreign guests always get this particular look when they are curious and wondering which person in any gathering is the most familiar with the royal palace.  But you haven’t looked like that.  So I think you already know.”

Zarad smiled and bit into another slice of tender venison. “The easy answer would be to say it’s the honorable Lord Comtois right here.”

She laughed, glancing at the under-ambassador. “Yes.  Of all the guests, he is indeed the one to receive the most benefits within the shadow of the crown.”

Lord Guillaume ate silently.  But his eyes spoke of wry resignation to the accusation.

“But I assure you, everything has been the fruit of his labor.  He is intelligent, hard-working, and decisive, and completely deserving of any largesse.”

Lord Guillaume shook his head, smiling. “Alright, Sabine.  Your compliment has been noted.”

She smiled back at him. “Good.” She turned again to Zarad, and leaned in again with sparkling eyes. “Shall I just say it?  It is Madam Rossi down there.  She thinks she is doing it because it amuses her, but she is mistaken.  She is sloppy, and I don’t think it will be long before she slips.  She isn’t important enough to be any real danger– to herself or anyone else– but–”

The Baroness shook her head. “One does hope that artists are little more honest than the usual sort.”

Zarad idly rotated his wine glass on the table.  He cleared his throat.

“And what of Lucre?” he said quietly.

The Baroness of Namaire and Lord Comtois both paused.  A nearly imperceptible stilling of their silverware and glasses, but Zarad had not imagined it.  The two continued on in their meal with all grace.

“We did wonder if you noticed,” she said, smiling.  The words were meant for him, the smile for the rest of the table.

“You took a great risk in asking,” Zarad smiled back.

“A risk worth taking, Your Highness,” Lord Guillaume stated. “My job is, after all, to smooth over diplomatic wrinkles.  And an uncalled for royal friend in the Corvali embassy?”

The lord did nothing as uncouth as to shrug, but the gesture was in his tone all the same.

Zarad laughed lightly. “The Revairan crown is certainly  _assertive_ , is it not?”

The Baroness returned to him another of her lovely, slow smiles.  By all rights, Zarad could take the episode as the Baroness and the Lord Comtois currying favor.  But he suspected it really was as simple as Lord Guillaume said.  Spies in embassies was nothing new.  But it was usually the host country’s plants, and not the home country’s diplomats turning against their homelands.  Lucre had been clever, but during his stay in Revaire Zarad had sensed something amiss.

In any case, the secret would keep.  And the excellent dinner with excellent company continued on.  During dessert, the three had a lively conversation about Revairan wine.  The best in the world, and Lord Guillaume had just purchased a vineyard and winery and had some interesting stories about his learning the art of vinting.

Post-dinner, more parlors and music rooms were opened, and various guests took turns at a beautiful state-of-the-art pianoforte.  Some dancing commenced, with amusing and melodramatic reels from the actors, and a billiards table began turning into a dangerous weapon in the hands of the inebriated guests.  It was, all in all, turning into a wonderful night lasting a bit beyond the boundaries of propriety.

Despite his usual care when it came to alcohol, Zarad found himself needing air.  Revairan wine was indeed dangerously excellent.  He slipped away from the revelers and ventured deeper into the manor, avoiding the eagerly helpful servants along the way.

“Oh?  It looks like you know the coolest spot in a house, too.”

The Baroness of Namaire stated this, smiling up at him where he stood on the broad steps down into the wine cellar.  Zarad climbed down a bit more and plopped himself into a seat on the steps, quite against the strictest decorum.

“You owe me a favor, my lady,” he stated, his words accompanied by one of his best smolders.

“Do I?” she said archly.

“Yes.  You have taken me into your home, accorded me the most gracious welcome, delighted me with the work and performance of a great maestro, fed me an excellent dinner, and plied me with the most delicious wine.”

“Ah,” the Baroness said, nodding sagely. “I see.  Of course I should be indebted to you after putting you through such treatment.”

“I’m glad we can agree,” Zarad said. “After all, what will I do when I leave the warmth beside you?  You have me, as Lord Guillaume said,  _bewitched_.  By your lovely character, and most dangerous of all, by your lovely countenance.  I can not imagine that in all the lands ever more I shall find a lady so incomparable.”

“Incomparable because my beauty has magicked away your words, or incomparable because your lies find no foundation to expound on?” she said with mock-severity.

“Ah, now you owe me two favors, my lady Baroness.  For surely you know you wound me with your disbelief.  I am as sincere as the moon, forever chasing the trailing train of his sun.”

She laughed and shook her head.  She changed her tone to become slightly more serious.

“All right.  You have honored my parlor and my table with your presence, Your Highness.  I suppose I could offer you one favor.”

“Then what if I wanted that favor now?  A promise to not get offended if I should say something potentially offensive.”

“Oh?  You are  _planning_ to offend me?  I suppose it is better than being carelessly offensive.  Very well.”

Zarad paused.  He studied her, and she studied him.  He watched as she saw the shift in his expression from the playful smolder to something else.

“I don’t think this is a compliment in this country, but you look very good in red,” he said quietly.

The Baroness did not say anything for a moment.  She did not straighten or register outrage in her expression.  Her cheeks, over the evening, had become lightly flushed with alcohol, and her lips were painted a pretty rose that suited her.  Her tears from earlier had washed away some of her makeup, and a kerchief had done its best to clean up that mess.  But it was becoming and casual.  That red velvet dress did indeed suit her tawny skin.  But her eyes were blue and clear and sharp.

“You’re right.  That isn’t a compliment in Revaire,” she said softly.

She sighed and looked over her shoulder, into the dim candlelight of the wine cellar. “It’s almost been a year.  Soon I won’t be wearing red at all.”

“But you have found happiness in a year,” Zarad said.

The Baroness glanced at him, and he wasn’t sure if he’d overstepped his bounds.  It had not escaped his notice, could not have escaped many eyes truthfully, the way that law student looked at the lady.  Or the way the lady kept her eyes away from his.

Zarad continued, “I only comment because it is rare to see such happiness found in our world.  It pleases me, and I have no ulterior motives.”

“Is that so.  No ulterior motives,” she stated quietly. “I can’t tell if you’re asking for advice in discretion or if you’re asking to kiss me.  Either way, I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you.”

He raised his hands placatingly. “Please.  I meant no real offense.  Truly.”

She studied him.  The night rang with quiet.  The party and clamor upstairs were as distant as memory, and here they stood in the coolness of the cellar, in a twilight otherworld.  The Baroness swept a dark curl from her face and shook her head.

“I see you’re asking me a different sort of question entirely.  You know, I love people.  I thought you did too, but I suspect I was wrong,” she said, gazing up at him. “I love loving people.  I like getting to know them, worrying about what they think of me, feeling all excited and flustered at meeting them anew.  Sometimes they disappoint you, or you disappoint them– that’s often my case.”

She laughed, both sweetly and bitterly.

“Then you fight– and I love caring enough about my relationships to fight with the other person.  It can be terribly messy and hurtful and make you feel awful.  But it’s so nice to come out of it wanting to apologize and then you are so much closer afterward.  Oh, I just love that.” She sighed with a smile. “Of course… sometimes you fight and… it just ends.  Just like that.  You cry for a while, and then you pick yourself up, and throw yourself back into the fray.  Oh, it’s so wonderfully messy.  I do love that.  I do.”

Zarad shifted. “So then… Your law student–”

“He’s not  _my_ law student.  He’s a whole person that can chose to live as he wants.  But, no, he isn’t  _my_ anything anymore.”

“I see.”

She laughed again. “I see what you mean about my wine.  It is quite vicious in its deliciousness, no?  I’ve embarrassed myself.”

“No, my lady–”

He stopped and turned.  At the top of the stairs, a shadow fell down toward them.  Caius Agramont stepped down the flight and stopped some lengths away from them.  His gaze locked onto that of the Baroness.  Silent, she straightened unconsciously.  Her eyelids fluttered with emotion, real emotion, suddenly brought to bear.  Her lips parted, but no words came.  The law student, too, seemed to have something terrible caught in his clenching throat.

After that long pause, the Baroness of Namaire pushed away from the wall she’d been leaning on and stepped carefully up the stairs.  She paused where Zarad sat.

“Good night, Your Highness,” she said.

“My lady,” he said, bending in somewhat of a bow.

She continued on, looking up at Caius Agramont.

“Sabine,” he said.

“There must be something like magic in the air tonight.  I was just thinking of you, and here you are.  It is lucky, as I am quite drunk, and would appreciate your assistance very much.”

With that, he pulled her into his arms and they climbed back out of the stairwell together.  And Zarad heard– said low and deep as if the phrase had been drawn from a dark and precious well– the words:

“ _I missed you_.”


	7. Victoire (no pair, Sabine/Zarad mention)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Character study of Sabine's oldest friend and foster sister, her maid Victoire.

Once, Chrétien, the second child and the oldest son, asked her where she came from.

“I am a fae,” Victoire had said. “Sent out from the other realms as punishment.”

“Did you do something bad?”

“Yes, very.  I was too inquisitive.  You see, Her Majesty, the Fae Queen, has a little room she locks from the rest of us with a little golden key.  Beneath the door is a crack from which such strange shadows slipped.  I could never get a hold of the key, so instead one day I peeked into that crack.  I was caught and cast out.”

“What was in the room?”

“Perhaps I will tell you when you are older.”

“Ugh, you’re just like Mama and Papa.”

“And you are just like the silly little gnomes of the other realms.  Foolish and impatient.”

“Is Madame Jean a fae?  She is very strange.”

“No, she’s a witch.  I don’t think there is anyone like me here.  I think I shall always be alone.”

“You’re with us though.  Won’t you be like us?”

Victoire had sent Chrétien out to play.  No, she would never really be like this family.  She stuck out like sudden snow on spring soil, among their brown and tawny faces.  Two foolish parents with more blood than sense, and eight children riding a thin edge between little aristocrats and wildlings.  Victoire was not one of them, but so what?  What was one more amongst their brood?  Especially when she could cook and clean and play a pretty tune on the pianoforte.

Inevitably, she became Sabine’s companion by way of the closeness in their ages and the girl’s own persistent sociability.  Sometimes the other girl had moods of sullenness and vanity, but she did have much to resent in her situation and too few opportunities to merely be herself without the responsibility of irresponsible parents.  Victoire weathered it all coolly; the excessive bad temper along with the sweetness desperately struggling to survive in such hostile conditions.

Of course, it was not always so bad.  There were periods of better situation, and it is curious to note that as wealth became more plentiful in the house, Victoire’s own position as companion or foster sister became demoted to lady’s maid.

It mattered little.

It was all the same to Victoire, as long as she had warm feet, a square meal, and a quiet corner in which to read and recover from the day.  She did not desire further relationships, but did not begrudge Sabine’s desire for her company.  She did not harbor ambition, but did not mind assisting with Sabine’s deep-rooted dissatisfaction.

Victoire had no great designs on being a grand lady’s maid, but neither did it repel her.

Yet when they entered Namaire’s house, and certain entrenched women in the staff began vying for a spot on the baroness’s personal staff, her reaction surprised her.  Victoire dug in her heels and rebuffed those that could not be trusted.

“It’s not as if  _you_ have any say in it,” a particularly brazen of these had said to her face. “After all, I heard you were just some foundling– a little orphan that wandered into that decrepit old house of theirs.”

“Well, you were misinformed,” Victoire had said. “I am a ghost made flesh.  I had haunted that house for centuries, in such pain and distress that I had long since forgot my original humanity.  Then I heard a pretty little song sung by those children.  My feelings were so moved, I became corporeal again, so that I could protect them.  But I do still feel dark currents of the dead.  Everywhere.  Especially in this house.”

“W-well, I never!”

When the baron died, Victoire had ordered all the red silk, helped Sabine through her tears, and given the widow all the names that should be expunged from the household.  The days were much more orderly, afterward, and Victoire was pleased to be able to read a great deal more. Not that there weren’t things to be done; no, there were the parties, and the scheming, and all the new business and political speculations.  Not to mention to mention the romantic misadventures.

Victoire sometimes supposed she should attempt to get more from life.  Being good at being a lady’s maid or the staff supervisor was one thing.  But a family or a lover or anything of that nature did not interest her.  People, on the whole, did little to interest her.

So she did not think much on her own feelings when Sabine departed for the Summit.

“What will you do, Victoire?”

“Perhaps I will fly back to my homeland on the moon where there is perpetual twilight.  Or visit my mer cousins deep beneath the blue waves.”

“Oh haha, very funny.  This may be the last time we see each other.  I will write, of course, to tell you if I make any decisions, but…  I want you to know that you are free to choose another life.”

“You say that quite a lot.”

“Well, I mean it.  You do puzzle me, dear.  I can never tell if you are happy with me or not.  And I have known you too long to be insensitive to your well-being.”

“The barony still needs looking after.  That steward can’t handle everything.  I am quite content with that.”

“Very well.  Do write.  And not just about the  _barony_.  About yourself, and if you change your mind.”

“Good-bye, Sabine.”

As was her habit, the baroness parted tearfully.

And Victoire spent some weeks walking the quiet halls of the Namaire estate, only half-remembering the peals of laughter and the clink of champagne flutes and the music of the absent guests and their entertainments.  Everyone walked on timid feet, especially around Victoire.  If the baroness married again, and moved away, then much of the staff would be let go.  And Victoire would be making many of those decisions.

It was nice to be respected, but it was better to be left in peace.

-

_My darling Victoire,_

_I have been quite foolish, my dear.  I have somehow misplaced my senses entirely these past few weeks, and allowed myself to be swept up in the empty flatteries of a paramour.  I am to be wed.  To His Highness, Prince Zarad of Corval._

_What can I say?  He is a fool, I am a fool, and we shall be terrible little fools together._

_I know you don’t care for these sort of details, but I am helpless in the face of my own silliness– I must confess that he is dreadfully glib and overtly charming and with such an ego!  And before you say that sounds familiar, I shall inform you that I am always sincere, and never do I participate in his sort of chicanery._

_But I am so fond of him._

_I am sure I am losing your attention at this point, so I will get straight to it.  I would like to know what you want to do.  You are free to stay at Namaire, but if you wish for a different position, in Revaire or wherever your heart should fancy, merely say the word and I will manage it.  If you wish for an alliance, I may have some ideas that could put you in a very nice station in life._

_If, and I will confess this is the option I selfishly prefer– if you wish to follow me to Corval, I will exert my utmost influence to allow it.  I think Corval will suit you, and I mean that in the most complimentary way._

_Perhaps not the heat, though.  You do burn so easily.  We shall buy hats._

_Write to me soon, as there are only a few weeks left._

_Your loving Sabine_

-

The next day, Victoire pinned a list of names to the board in the servants’ quarters where unpleasant announcements were attached.

She spent the morning in a rotation of brief meetings with certain staff members.  Several generous parcels of coins sat in her desk drawer, and as one maid or under-butler came in, they left with their severance pay, instructions on when and how they should exit the Namaire estate and whether they would be getting a recommendation.  Also, tears.  They often left with tears.

Victore finally pushed her door open to stare down the line of servants sitting in a row of chairs against the wall.

“I have had quite enough of the crying,” Victoire stated coolly. “It is unprofessional and is quickly dissolving any desire I have to impart pay and recommendation letters.  I suggest leaving this moment if you plan on shedding tears in my office.”

The door clicked decisively behind her, shutting out the wide eyes and trembling lips.

 _Really_.  Trembling lips!

It was easier when Sabine was here.  It was easier  _for_ Sabine.  She could be the sweet and sympathetic one.  Victoire was the authority, the hammer.  She didn’t mind.

It suited her.

Suitably threatened, the last of the fired maids and manservants passed in and out of her office with dry cheeks.  Afternoon bent back high in the yellow sky before Victoire was finally left alone with her thoughts.  Her office: cozy at about six paces in any direction, with a little worn desk, a velvet tufted chair on her side, and a plain wooden seat on the other.  Neatly organized staff records in her desk drawers, a brand new blotter on the surface, and an elegant mother-of-pearl fountain pen.  A gift.

Victoire pulled open her top drawer.  She was half-startled by the palor of her own slim hand on the mahogany woodwork.  She took out Sabine’s letter.  Outside her half-open window, the stablemasters were discussing the plans for selling the estate’s horses.  Not all of them could go; Precious, Marble Oracle, and Tantivy were all great sources of income as proven studs, and of course the work horses for the estate’s skeleton crew would stay.  But the others would be sold.

Victoire looked back down at the letter.

“Perhaps I will transform back into a fine mare; dun-colored and white-maned with violets in my tail.  I will run and run and leave nothing behind.  I will be flotsam and jetsam on a cold summer breeze.”

There was no reply.

Victoire sighed.  She pulled blank stationery out, and plucked the mother-of-pearl fountain pen from its stand.  She would write to Sabine, and admit a preference for headscarves over hats for the Corvali sun.

After all, she would perhaps miss the girl.  Perhaps.


	8. Anniversary (OC-Guillaume/OCs, m/m)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Confession: I love Guillaume. I'm terrible to him, but I love him. I wanted to write something that featured him, and showed what his typical day was like, with Sabine acting as a background character for once.

Lord Guillaume Comtois, Under-Ambassador at the Revairan Embassy in management of domestic affairs, was just putting in his left cufflink when his butler Yates knocked on his bedroom door. **  
**

“Come in,” Guillaume stated.  His manservant Henri hovered at his shoulder, holding up his coat for the day with his clean white gloves.  The black silk had been carefully brushed and held not even the smallest speck of lint.

Yates cracked the door open.  He’d worked under the previous butler for fifteen years.  The previous butler had worked for the Comtois house for nearly sixty.  Nobility and their servants tended toward lifelong affairs with one another.

“Sir,” Yates said quietly. “A Mister Morel from the embassy to see you.  He says it’s urgent.”

Guillaume frowned at him.

“Did he say what about?”

“No, sir.”

“Sun’s barely up, and he’s already pushing a new crisis on me?”

“Shall I send him away?”

“No,” Guillaume stated.  He gestured to Henri and let him help him with his coat. “Human life presever happens to be my chief responsibility.”

Yates followed him out the door and down the dark-carpeted hall lined the portraits of all the Comtois lords and ladies from the ages, human layers down to the depths of the Great Wars.  Some of them shared the dark sepia skin, the broad and pronounced cheekbones, and the lush lips that he had inherited.  As Guillaume climbed down his grand stairway with sharp, quick taps from his hard heels, Morel at the bottom stared up at him uneasily.

“What is it now?” Guillaume said, his voice echoing in the wide and high foyer.

Morel coughed nervously, fiddling with his hat in his hands.  A few years younger than Guillaume, but from the sort of family that had been ingrained into the diplomatic service for aeons.  And had the good sense to adapt quickly to changing policies, changing regimes.  Morel, nervous and blatantly ginger-haired, had hung on to his position and stumbled up promotions by din of his people skills.  In other words, he didn’t mind being the butt of the jokes of foreign dignitaries and letting them outdrink him.

“Ah, sir,” Morel said. “There was– well, I was at the– the thing is–”

“You were at the Starre last night, playing nursemaid to that Fetti– Fettiman person– That Arlish pompous bootlicker.”

“Lord Fettiplace.  And I was at the Starre with him.  And the Corbet brothers, and–”

“Get to the point, Morel.”

The younger man did that jerky nervous cough again. “Okay, well.  You know how I’ve been using that Bathurst grandson– the one with the doctorate, because Fettiman–  _Fettiplace_ fancies himself some sort of trade genius.”

“Yes, and Jon Bathurst had strict instructions to dumb it down for the man,” Guillaume said.  His tone was getting more and more clipped and polite, in the way that meant his inner ire was growing.

Morel licked his lips. “Yes, well.  We all got a little– well, _a lot_  drunk and forgot to keep Bathurst from getting drunk, and then he and Fettiplace got into it–”

Guillaume raised a hand, and Morel shut up, the whites of his eyes gone broad.

“Just tell me how bad it is,” Guillaume stated.

“Ah,” Morel started. “We may have all begun chanting at him, ‘ _Revairan mores for Arlish whores_ ’ at one point.  Or maybe it was Revairan whores.  I don’t quite, um, remember.”

Guillaume closed his eyes and exhaled.  All in all, it was far too early in the morning to have such a tension headache coming on.  When he reopened his eyes, Morel was staring at him anxiously.

His jaw shifting, he said, low and calm, “I will fix this.  I want  _you_ to go home.  In fact, I want you to go home for the next two weeks until Lord Fettiplace gets back on a boat to whatever dull hole he crawled from.  And you had  _better_ pray that it’s still two weeks from now, and not this afternoon.”

Morel opened and closed his mouth.  Finally, he nodded.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

He made a sort of half bow.  Henri had reappeared with his hat, which Guillaume took.

Putting on his own, Morel gestured to the door as the doorman opened it. “I’m going toward the embassy, shall I walk you part way?”

Guillaume stopped on the threshold to stare back at the man.  The freckles on Morel’s neck seemed to scatter and contract as his adam’s apple bobbed.

“Or I can take the scenic route,” Morel stated, slightly pitchy.

“That would be advisable,” Guilluame answered with a hard smile.

Despite Yates’s polite reminder (read: admonition) that he hadn’t had breakfast, Guillaume left his city manor for the quiet lane his family had spent decades and decades of social seasons on.  The sky still held that delicate touch of violet and canary yellow of the early hours of morning, which belonged to the laundresses carrying large sacks of their livelihood on their hips.  The hours that belonged to the manservants taking gaggles of white yipping lapdogs out of their mistresses’ hair.  It would be hours yet before the nobility took to the parks or the shops.

Guillaume crossed two streets over and passed a few blocks of well-to-do white cake-topper mansions.  He stopped at the Namaire manor.

-

“Darling, it is far too early in the morning for such angry requests,” Sabine stated.

She was seated in her sunny morning room, tawny with dark curls half-up and wearing a dressing coat too elaborate for so early in the day.  But she was never one to be told there was a certain protocol for overwrought embroidery.  The baroness stared at him over a steaming teacup.  Guillaume sighed and unbuttoned the bottom button of his coat as he sat across from her.

“It was not an angry request,” he said.

He waved away a servant when he tried to give him a setting for the breakfast array on the table.  Sabine beckoned the servant back.

“Your face says otherwise,” she stated. “Eat.  You clearly need the sustenance.”

“If it’s too much of an imposition–”

“I didn’t say that,” Sabine said. “It’s just that I had all these lovely little plans today.  I’d like more details if I’m going to cancel them.”

Guillaume accepted a cup of tea and a slice of delicious smelling quiche.  This gesture of obedience seemed to please her, as the baroness smiled for once.  He gave her back the false smile that she always knew was false but also made light of his inner wrath.  She laughed.

He took a sip of tea. “Really, it doesn’t have to be anything elaborate.  You know Jan Allard, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “Through Didier.  You want me to invite him?”

“Allard, yes.  Didier, no,” Guillaume said. “I need Jan Allard, a casual affair– not a full dinner or anything too obvious, and you and all your charming glory.”

She gave raised a brow at him. “Outright flattery.  You’re really giving it the hard sell.  Either that or this person we’re wooing has somehow beguiled you shamelessly.”

“It’s not that sort of wooing,” he stated. “It’s more along the lines of ‘you  _could_ take your trade agreement to Corval because some idiot minor diplomat here insulted you, but look– something shiny, woo.’”

He made appropriate finger motions at the sound effect.  Sabine laughed, falling to the back of her chair.

“You really are in a state today,” she said, giggling. “Fine.  Who is this mystery man of the hour?”

“Lord Nealson Fettiplace, of Arland.  Member of the Arlish royal secretariat, liason between the treasury and various embassies.  I say ‘various’ because it seems that his self-righteous pontificating on things he has little understanding of gets him politely shoved off into the pools of some other unsuspecting diplomatic corps with alarming regularity.”

“ _Arlish_?” Sabine said. “Are you sure about this?  They’re terrified of widows over there.  Think we’re all soul-sucking harpies or something.”

“That or they’re banking on it,” Guillaume said drily.

She put down her teacup and frowned at him. “No need to be so crude.  It’s  _morning_.”

“You brought it up,” he returned.

Sabine gave him a  _look_.  He gazed back placidly.  And then they both couldn’t help snorting and grinning at each other.

“Trust me,” Guillaume stated. “He’s the type to think he’s being worldly or something by gracing your home.”

“Charming,” Sabine said.  She shook her head with exaggerated primness. “Alright.  A little gathering just thrown together–  _my_ , aren’t you a  _fascinating_ person, Lord Fettiworth–”

“Fettiplace.”

“Fettiplace,” she agreed solemnly.

Guillaume stood and rebuttoned his jacket.  He rounded the table to her chair, and bent to kiss her on the cheek.

“Thank you,” he told her.

She gazed up at him.  Something passed in her eyes, and she took his hand in one of hers.

“Guillaume…” she hesitated. “Today is…”

He lightly squeezed her hand.  He didn’t exactly warn her with his eyes, but she must have understood all the same.  She smiled in a thin way.

She exhaled. “Well.  You may as well go on.  I have an impromptu run-in with Allard on my itinerary and other arrangements to make.”

Guillaume nodded and left the Namaire city manor for the slightly busier lane.  The Lorraine manse faced directly across the way, but Hugo Lorraine was out playing polo and failing at hunting out in the countryside for about a week.  Hugo never got up before noon, anyway.  And Guillaume had better uses of his time than having his ear chattered off by the ninny-headed prat.  Why were they friends again?

Pulling his hat more snugly against his close-cropped scalp, Guillaume went on.  It was a bit more of a walk to the embassy from Sabine’s than from his own street, and he spent the time ruminating about all that he had to do.

The Royal Embassy of Revaire resided in a relatively new building compound, only two centuries old, that had been built after that particularly nasty Corvali invasion which reached as far inland as the capital.  The previous embassy had been burned and pillaged, and the new one sprawled across nearly an entire block that was a stone’s throw from the royal palace.  No one could be mistaken about the Crown’s shadow eternally falling on the business of diplomatic relations.

Guillaume climbed rapidly up the broad expanse of steps into the embassy, nodding to the men and women he knew.  At this hour, most were the commoners at assistance jobs and the more minor secretary positions; the nobles who held the majority of the higher ranks rarely came in before the lunch hour.  He made it all the way across the over-large and over-decorated foyer that nearly defeaned you with echoes during the busiest hours (read: end of the day rush out), up the stairs to his floor, and half-way down the dark-purple south wing that held the domestic Revairan ambassadors before he was stopped for a conversation.

“Lord Comtois,” said the Skaltan man exiting a door to his left.

“Secretary Urel,” Guillaume returned with a practised smile.

Urel of Skalt had not actually returned to his homeland in nearly a decade.  His father was an Arlish merchant’s son that had gotten “kidnapped” by a Hisean captain and after a few years at sea deposited in Skalt rather than returned to Arland.  A Skaltan warrior had married him, and subsequently “divorced” (as their country did allow) when the relationship soured.  Urel, the product of this relationship, ended up taking diplomatic positions for his tribe at quite a young age.  He’d spent eight years in Corval and the last eighteen months in Revaire.

Urel wore traditional tattoos across his hands, a fine Corvali cloak over a somewhat unusual Revairan suit, and a full head of mahogany curls.

“Early bird gets the worm?” Urel smiled, his gray eyes crinkling at the corners.

“Something along those lines,” Guillaume stated drily. “You’ve done well, I heard.  Handling the treasury and the exchange rates.”

“Well for my country or yours?” he returned, teeth flashing.

“That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?  Promises of fine knowledge and miraculous remedies is one thing, but producing realities…”

“That  _is_ the kicker, isn’t it?” Urel laughed lightly. “Well, certainly makes my negotiated rate all the more impressive, no?”

“Certainly.”

“In fact,” Urel continued with his eyes narrowing and that particular dancing smile flitting about his well-featured face. “I was thinking of you during the talks.”

Guillaume did not register a bit of surprise in his expression, did not look around to see if others were listening.  You learned long ago not to draw attention at these moments; either that or suffer suspicion and ridicule stemming from your own ineptitudes.  The hall was broad and empty, anyway; only their reflections across the polished marble floor kept them company.

Guillaume’s jaw shifted. “Really?  And here I thought I had left your regard completely.”

Urel tilted his head slightly with an apologetic and charming smile. “On the contrary.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I’ve always admired your negotiation skills.”

“I don’t know,” Guillaume said carefully. “Your experience in these matters seem much more useful than any skill I could claim.”

The Skaltan diplomat chuckled as he took a step closer. “Either way, I’ve enjoyed my time here and I’m planning to stay longer.  In the future, I hope I can count on your friendship.”

Guillaume smiled, aware of Urel’s proximity and all the things it brought with it (scent and that unbearable unseen pressure).  Like a warm lake, deep and dark.

“Of course,” he returned instead with all due protocol.

“Are you free for lunch?” Urel asked lightly.

Guillaume paused.  Behind them, a pair of under-secretaries passed down the hall with ringing heels and a quiet conversation.  Guillaume took his own step forward, as if he were going to pass the other man by completely, but stopped to turn his head until they were nearly bumping noses.

He whispered, “If you want to screw, you don’t have to act like you’re courting me.  You don’t have to ask me to lunch, or to tea, or the club.  And no, I’m unavailable today.”

Urel considered him.

They’d met, over a year ago now, not long after Urel had first arrived in Revaire.  It had begun rather quickly; an invitation to the club, the next week an invitation back home for a nightcap.  And then the ridiculous circus of highs and lows, suddenly waxing and waning interest.  It was understandable in a way; they did not have the luxury of freedom from social judgment, and to have an interest at all outside of marriage vows had opprobriums.  But still.  

Guillaume did not appreciate being toyed with.

“Perhaps next week,” Urel stated.

“We’ll see,” Guillaume returned.

They tipped hats to one another and went on their ways.

At his section’s office, he gave his cloak and hat to an assistant and knocked on the open doorframe of Baron Savagn’s personal office.  The older man, with a terra-cotta swarthiness and a frame given to bulk, glanced up at his entrance through little gold rimmed round spectacles.  He slapped down the sheaf of papers to his desk’s ink-stained green felt blotter.

“Morel went to you?” the baron asked.

“The most charming of wake-up calls,” Guillaume answered. “I’ll handle it.”

“Good,” Savagn stated.

That was a dismissal.  Baron Savagn ran his section of Revairan domestic diplomats with a hands-off policy that tended to weed out complete incompetents.  If you couldn’t at least float in this pool of piranhas, then you were quickly rid of by the brunt of your own mistakes.  It suited Guillaume quite well; he could take his own prerogatives rather than have some nepotistic fool who’s forefathers had been bumbling through the exact some job for generations breathing down his neck.

Guillaume spent the rest of the morning riffling through Morel’s notes on Fettiplace for all the good that did him (read: they did no good at all).  And he sent a note to an acquaintance among the Arlish envoy that owed him a favor: instructions to stop Fettiplace in the foyer at day’s end by whatever means necessary (note: the sort of triteness that passed for conversation with the man).

Around noon, a messenger delivered a card from Sabine:

_Cards.  I hope the man is good at winning, because we are very good at losing, aren’t we, dear?  Light repast at the game table, wine yes or no? Lovely Jan sends his regards._

He told her yes to the wine, but to keep it pale and innocent-looking; rieslings and chardonnays.

In the afternoon, Guillaume wandered to the Covali wing (which overlooked the embassy’s one garden, the rich bastards), to ostensibly check up on some gossip.  In reality, he was feeling the waters on the subject of the one crucial trade agreement Fettiplace had his grubby little hands on.  The verdict: Corvali opinions were obtuse, useless, and mildly threatening.  As usual.

Four candlemarks past noon, and the ambassadors and secretaries began filing out of their offices to linger in the halls and community areas for those end of the day conversations which mattered as much as the day’s work at times.  Guillaume gave his apologies to the men and women in his section, and calmly strode through the maze of corridors for the embassy’s main foyer.

“Fanny Luyten,” Guillaume called when he spotted his target.

The Arlish under-secretary looked up at his greeting.  Fanny Luyten occupied a position in which she was decidedly outnumbered.  Arland maintained a definite baseline for their ambassadors: noble, rich, conservative, and male.  Fanny had the disadvantage of being none of these and the great mystery of having overcome all of them.  Guillaume was curious about her story but knew only half of it and doubted anyone would ever know the full of it.

“Lord Comtois, good evening,” Fanny Luyten smiled and curtsied at his approach.  Her skin shone golden against black hair, her dress formal, clean-lined, and high-collared.  She turned to her companion beside her. “Lord Fettiplace, may I introduce Lord Guillaume Comtois, Revairan Under-Ambassador.  Lord Comtois, Lord Nealson Fettiplace of Arland’s royal secretariat.”

The gentlemen exchanged bows.

“Lord Fettiplace, your reputation proceeds you,” Guillaume said, flashing a white smile.

“Mmm, I’m afraid you have the better of me then, sir,” the Arlish dignitary said.  He had a way of standing, with his large and rather poofed red cravat, his chest thrust forward and one hand tucked into the interior of his waistcoat, that reminded one of some sort of bird.  The complex and singular curl laying across his forehead did little to repair this image.

“That is often the case, sir,” Fanny interjected. “Lord Comtois seems to know all occupants of the room no matter the occasion.  He is quite–”

“Yes, Revairans do seem to  _know_ a lot, don’t they,” Fettiplace interrupted with a bit more force than the light conversation called for.  When Guillaume and Fanny smiled politely at him during the pause, he added, “About things.  All sorts, it would  _seem_.”

“Well!” Fanny said brightly, ignoring the awkwardness entirely. “You said you had a carriage waiting, Lord Comtois?”

“Yes, the baroness was kind enough to send one,” Guillaume replied.   He turned back to Fettiplace. “Are you engaged this evening, my lord?  I have heard you have fascinating views on international trade and would love to hear more.  My friend, the Baroness of Namaire, is having a small gathering tonight and invited myself and Miss Luyten here.  Cards, I think, and a light dinner.  You are welcome to join.”

“Who?” Fettiplace all but demanded of Fanny beside him.

“The Baroness of Namaire.  Earlier, Countess Ylda and Lord Farrow were discussing a gala she held not long ago.”

Fettiplace tapped his elaborately topped walking cane with two decided knocks. “Oh yes, the  _widow_.”

Guillaume smiled over his own inner bristling. “I think Jan Allard will be there.  Do you know of his work, my lord?”

Fettiplace sputtered a bit,  _Of course– everyone in my field knows Jan Allard and The Seven Components of Controlled Trade_ , and without much further prompting he followed them to the carriage Sabine had sent.  Many exclamations were made over how honored they all were to have such a guest as Fettiplace among them.  Thank heavens the trip to the Namaire mansion was short, as the Arlish dignitaries puffing up as Guillaume and Fanny ooh’d over his circuitous expounding on market forces became an entirely untenable charade.

Of course, as they were ushered into one of her lounges, Sabine dazzled them with her usual charm and warmth.  And Guillaume’s opinion of Fettiplace solidified as he watched the Arlish dignitary be completely spellbound by Sabine’s long lashes and the pretty figure she cut.  The man pretended to be immune and cool-headed about her smiles and sweet comments that greased the wheels of their conversation – but it was obvious.  Guillaume rather wanted to backhand the idiot.

Jan Allard seemed amused by the whole affair.  The economist and writer had a square jaw and boyish freckles dancing across his masculine nose.  Sabine must have primed Allard before their arrival, because he required little prompting to expound eloquently on his own theories, twisting them even to somehow feature Arland as a paragon of a judicious economic and political power.

“For example,” Allard was saying, “I’m sure Arland would never permit the humiliations to the institution of the crown as they do here in Revaire.”

“Here, here!” Fettiplace harrumphed.  He was a little red from all the white wine and the winnings he’d pried from the card table.

“Just the other day, I was passing the Grand Square– right in the center of our fair city– where they were burning the latest pamphlet of that scoundrel Fox Foxley.  You know him, my lord?”

“Rebellious firebrand of some sort, no?” Fettiplace sniffed.

Allard raised his glass in salute. “The very same, sir.  Shameful stuff, sir.  Just shameful.  Spreading dissent and dissatisfaction in this sensitive time.”

“They ought to catch him and string him up!” Fettiplace barked.

Sabine brought a hand to her cheek and her face became the very picture of maidenly dismay. “Really, gentlemen, I appreciate such manly passion.  But there are ladies present.”

Fettiplace coughed. “I apologize for offending your more delicate sensibilities, my lady.”

Sabine smiled at him with those sparkling blue eyes of hers.  Fettiplace practically  _preened_.

To Guillaume’s right, Fanny Luyten was trying to stifle a giggle.  She leaned into the card table with a conspiratorial whisper.

“I’ve  _seen_ one of those pamphlets, sirs.  And the man can  _write_.”

Guillaume threw down his hand. “I’m out.” No one was really playing anymore, anyway.  He continued, “Then it’s all the more shameful that such talents should be wasted.”

Jan Allard began chuckling. “Well, wasted talent or not– it is bound to be dead talent soon enough.  The Crown will run that Fox Foxley down with their dogs soon enough.”

Sabine interjected, her tone raised, “I believe that’s enough of such dreary talk, gentlemen.  Lord Fettiplace, do you play the pianoforte?  Come, we shall have music.”

Fettiplace stumbled along in the hostess’s wake to an adjacent music room.  Fanny tagged along, altogether too amused by the spectacle of the Arlish man’s ponderous interpretation of a light Revairan ditty and Sabine’s whimsical singing, wandering from note to note with undue confidence.

Allard, still seated at the table with Guillaume, watched the scene down the long room and through a broad arch.  The writer wore a half-smile.  And the half-smile incrementally widened when Sabine glanced up at them from her position standing beside the seated Fettiplace.

Ah.

Allard turned back to Guillaume, getting up to take a seat directly next to him.

“You are shameless,” Guillaume told him, amused.

Allard raised a brow.

Guillaume shook his head. “It’s alright.  She’s very careful.  We won’t be overheard.” He waved vaguely around the candlelit room, the darkness outside having come creeping in to nurture the interior shadows.  Guillaume grinned. “What was it?  The Crown’s dogs will run you down?”

Allard laughed.  “Did I sell it too hard?”

“Your head is going to roll for such stunts,” Guillaume told him, reaching for the wine and two glasses.

Allard accepted the offering. “I’m surprised it hasn’t already.  Nice to hear that I actually have talent to waste, though.”

Guillaume considered him.  “I suspect there was another pair of lips you’d rather have heard that from,” he said over his wine glass.

Allard, having had one eye on the scene in the other room and one ear on their conversation, turned fully to Guillaume at this.

“Look, I don’t want to step on any toes,” the writer said, low and apologetic. “I know she’s doing all this for you, and–”

Guillaume raised a hand to stop him. “Relax.  It’s not like that between us.”

Allard’s broad shoulders visibly loosened. “Oh.  It’s just you’re always something of a pair at social events–”

“We’re friends.  We help each other out,” Guillaume smiled.

Pausing, the writer grinned slowly.  He leaned in with twinkling (read:  _twinkling_ ) eyes. “So?  What do you think?”

Guillaume shook his head; they were all clearly feeling the wine. “She likes a brooding intellectual.”

Allard chuckled. “Well, I’m up a shit creek, then, pardon my Old Revairan, as I am clearly neither of those.”

The evening ended better than expected with Fettiplace sufficiently pampered and flattered.  Guillaume did not approach the subject of the trade agreement; that wasn’t how this worked and he was comfortably assured that the man wasn’t running off on the next outbound ship for Corval.  He would drop by the Arlish envoy in the morning to check on Fanny, say a brief hello to Fettiplace, and invite him to lunch later this week.  One needed a certain amount of coyness, after all.  Negotiation was a game of finding who needed the other more.

It was always obvious which was the loser in the end.

-

After the guests had been shuffled off in one of her coaches, Sabine tiredly dragged herself to her room.  She lost her shoes at the foot of the first flight of stairs; someone would get them eventually.  They were used to it, her dear staff.  She was pulling her long earrings out when she pushed open her room’s door, and found Guillaume half-sprawled on a settee.  She jumped, and dropped the lacey diamonds in her hand.

“Heavens, you startled me,” she scolded him as she bent to scoop up the earring.

Guillaume straightened a bit, looking owlish and tired and a bit crumpled.  His collar hung loose and he’d also kicked his shoes off.

“Sorry,” he said. “Victoire let me in.”

“I thought you wandered away a while ago.”

He shrugged.  She turned away to wet a cloth at her wash basin and wipe away at her makeup.  He watched her: these simple domestic actions so rarely seen.

She was pulling pins out of her curls when he said, “Sabine.”

She looked at him.  At his gesture she approached his settee and sat.

He leaned into her.

“Allard likes you,” he told her.

She sighed and curled her feet up underneath her, and made a bed of silk and tulle with her skirts that whispered and protested as Guillaume leaned into them.

“I know,” she said. “I know, and I  _shouldn’t_.  The Summit isn’t too far now.”

He glanced at her.  At his look, she couldn’t help cracking a grin.

“ _I really shouldn’t_.”

He snorted as she giggled softly.

Their laughter subsided into quiet.  This had been the room she’d shared with the baron; she’d never changed rooms, even after his death.  Guillaume had been to this house many times but could count on one hand the times he’d entered this room.  He should feel like an intruder, an interloper.  But he didn’t.  Just like the nature of her marriage had changed through the years, the meaning and significance of this room, those portraits, and that bed had changed as well.

“It’s been six years,” Guillaume finally said. “Six years since his death this day.”

Sabine shifted.  She put an arm around his shoulders.

“I thought–” she said slowly, pausing. “You’ve never wanted to talk about this before.”

Guillaume shrugged. “A mistake, I think.  Do you mind?”

“No, of course not–” she stated.  Her arm tightened around him and he closed his eyes.

“I spent years running after someone who was never going to give me what I needed,” Guillaume said. “It wasn’t much, I told myself.  He’ll come around.  I was too young and–”

He stumbled. “I was too young and in love to see that I needed to move on.  I was foolish and blind, and it made me permissive to the way he treated me.  I could blame him entirely, but in hindsight I know I should have been more honest about what I wanted.  To him, and most of all to myself.”

He leaned further into her shoulder, and she rested her cheek against his temple.

“Oh, darling,” she whispered.

“I just needed a few words,” Guillaume continued. “That’s all.  I didn’t need a promise or some grand gesture.  I see now I was actually asking for the hardest thing.  But he didn’t have to make it so difficult for me to let go–”

He faltered. “He didn’t have to keep reaching for me.” He paused. “Well.  I suppose I didn’t have to keep reaching back, either.”

He snorted humorlessly.

“And then he had the nerve to die on me.  And even after all these years, I will suddenly look up and miss him– miss him like someone beating me bloody. Like someone stabbing me again and again.  I don’t know how many times I’ve thought, fine, it would be fine if he kept using me, just please let him come back, if he were just here–”

He stopped.  She’d begun crying, or was that him?  He was very, very tired.

And it was all so difficult.

-

He woke to dim early morning sunbeams toying with those inexplicable dust motes silhouetted like little lives adrift in the cosmos.

They’d fallen asleep on the settee, clothed and rumpled, with her arm around him and him tucked into her chest.  He sat up, sighing, and tried not to disturb her.  But she still stirred and brought up a hand over her eyes, making a soft little unhappy grunt.

He scooted away, planting his feet back onto terra firma and leaning into his palms, elbows resting on his knees.  He finally looked up to meet her gaze.  He reached out, and she took his hand.  Their fingers squeezed, reassuring in the pressure and realness.

“I love you,” she told him. “Nothing will ever mean more to me than your friendship.”

He gave her a look. “Knock on wood.  You’ll make a liar of yourself one of these days.”

She returned to him her own pointed look. “I mean it.  I love you.”

He smiled. “Thank you.  I love you, too, Sabine.”

Their palms grew warm.

“Do you think Victoire could spirit me out of here?  Unseen?”

“Embarrassed, are you?  Very well, come along.”

“You  _know_ I didn’t mean–”

“Oh, I know what you meant, Guillaume Comtois–” she laughed.

He left the Namaire manse, not even dreading the sight of Lord Fettiplace later on that day.


	9. A Welcome (Sabine/Zarad, Constance/Aamir)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One of those things I keep meaning to go back to and continue on with. Set after the Summit, and their marriage. And, oh joy, here immediately begins the court politics~! 8D And I try my hand at Constance.

He had such an unfairly beautiful profile, Constance thought to herself, not for the first time.  A deep, steep forehead sloping to a bold-bridged nose, proud and assertive.  The eyes pushed forward, so that his gaze hit you with all haste.  The high-blooded and aristocratic mouth.  His wonderful brass and honey-warm skin that made him a part of this place and its heat and its brilliance and its shadows.

Beside him, lingering in the protection of the portico eaves, Constance knew she was wan.  If the people below, chattering as they disembarked from carriages and palanquins– if they looked up, they would see a colorless thing beside the crown prince.  A thing that waited and lingered and drifted.

Aamir snorted, softly in that cultured way he had.  His eyes were locked on the entering guests.

“So that’s what he brought back,” her husband said.

Constance looked.  The third prince was helping a lady from his phaeton.  A phaeton, in this overbright warmth!  She had not seen him in some time, but he was just as ever.  The lady descended with a smile, evident even from here, as her new husband spoke to one of his friends come to greet them.

“I’ve heard she is quite charming,” Constance stated.

Aamir did not look at her. “I don’t need you to tell me what eyes can clearly see.  It’s not her charms he married her for.  And trust me, he could have gotten the same from any cat house in the honey district for far less.”

Constance was not required to reply.  Certain birds, from the depths of the damp Jiyeli forests, can be trained to repeat simple phrases.  But when they encounter some new idea, some new beyond-their-ken experience, these iridescent animals turn about their dark and dumb eyes, clicking granite beaks.  Constance could not claim such color or dewey deep eyes, but still at every hint of Aamir’s inner antagonism revealed, she felt she must much resemble such a bird.  You couldn’t blame him; he had every right to be as careless in this way as if he spoke in front of an antique, sun-blistered and sun-washed painting.  What more secrets would oil pigments impart then the crown princess would?

Aamir shifted.

Below, as one of the servants bowed to the third prince and his wife with a gesture to lead them on– something happened which struck Constance and the crown prince like a stone.  Zarad reached for her– and before laying a gentlemanly hand, palm no doubt warm and formal, in the small of her back– before this, before he thought anyone would notice: Zarad lifted his fingers, and, light-as-air, brushed a stray curl from her cheek.

Constance silently inhaled.

It wasn’t inappropriate.  It was hardly the most demonstrative– feigned or otherwise– gesture that she’d seen here in the Corvali court, certainly more liberal than her homeland.  But something in that glimpsed touch– what an insignificant thing, really– something in the effortlessness of it, the naturalness of it… It made this godforsaken, omnipresent heat press on her.  A deep and searing pressure that pushed and pushed her ever forward, breathless and dazed.  The sight of the third prince’s line of sight and that of his wife; the turning of their eyes sickened and thrilled her.

“Well, well,” Aamir murmured. “I stand corrected.”

He had seen it too.

Constance turned to him.  The suddenness of her movement (the suddenness of a movement taken by such a habitually slow creature) finally drew his eye to her.  His beautiful, thick-lashed eyes– black butterfly gossamer– roved over her and her uselessly twitching lips.  He snorted.

Turning his back on her, he returned to dressing himself.  He preferred to depend on servants as little as possible.  Too paranoid.  Rightfully so.

“Go downstairs.  Be a hostess,” he told her, not looking at her.

Constance said nothing.  She left quietly.

-

“The empress expresses her regrets for not attending, Your Royal Highness, but she did not feel entirely well and did not wish to burden this happy occasion with her inauspicious presence.”

Constance curtsied to the blue-black lady, older and of infinite spare elegance.

“Not at all, Lady Dhorée,” she said. “Any appearance of Her Majesty or her people is a blessing to this house.  I only hope her illness is not serious?”

Lady Dhorée smiled genially. “No.  A mere weakness and headache, related to stress.  Her Majesty does take on so much.”

“Too true,” Constance said. “I can only regret my own shortcomings as her daughter-in-law, my inability to lessen her burden.”

“You are too modest– what a fine gathering you’ve held tonight to welcome home the third prince.”

“Thank you.  You are too kind, Lady Dhorée.  I will pray for Her Majesty’s quick recovery, and pay a visit soon.”

The lady curtsied. “Your prayers would be most gratifying, Your Royal Highness.  And perhaps you can visit with the new princess.  Her Majesty regrets not extending a warmer welcome.”

Her prayers were welcome– unseen and unheard– but her visit as a mere social call, without the political gift of bringing along the third princess was not at all appreciated.

Constance smiled. “Of course, my lady.  Would you like to meet her yourself?”

Lady Dhorée returned the smile and nodded.  For all her refined manners, the presence of this particular favorite of the empress worried Constance.  She had heard the rumours.  The ex-apothecary.  The poison master.  It was no coincidence that Lady Dhorée seemed frequently involved in the affairs and quiet deaths of Her Majesty’s enemies.

With a soft, pale hand, Constance guided the lady through the marble halls and finely-paved garden paths toward a particular pavilion, with a view of a neat little pond over-abundance with lilies.  A small group of noblewomen had collected there, chattering like a lovely flock of silken, jewel-colored birds.  The newly-coronated Princess Sabine stood at their center.

An unusual woman, to be sure, that could both conjure and realize the ambition to marry once, attend a Summit, and remarry into the imperial house of Corval.  Pretty and tawny and already wearing a comely tan, she held what vaguely resembled a small court with the ladies ooh’ing over each others’ emeralds and rubies and sapphires.

Constance made the introductions between the other princess and the empress’s lady.  The noblewomen quieted with watchful eyes over polite smiles.  It sent a message that Her Majesty did not appear herself on this first intimate occasion to speak to the third prince’s wife, and instead sent her primary weapon.

Princess Sabine smiled graciously at Lady Dhorée’s curtsy.  They exchanged the usual pleasantries and wishes for the empress’s recovery.  She held herself well, sparing no offence or quarter to Lady Dhorée’s presence.  Greetings made, the empress’s woman excused herself, leaving the younger women to renew their innocent discussions of fashion.  Constance touched the other princess’s sleeve.

“My lady, I have a side garden here built in the Revairan style.  I would love to hear your opinion on it,” Constance said.

The woman laughed lightly. “Of course, Your Royal Highness.  Though, I am afraid my opinion should weigh very little in your regard; I enjoy garden parties, but more for the party aspect rather than the garden itself.”

Constance smiled.  She led them in the slow stately way of their rank and gentility along a meandering path toward a side garden.  They talked of small things and met no one along their way.  It had been about a week since she’d seen her new sister-in-law.  At the coronation.  The image of the Revairan, decked in a cloth-of-gold state gown, and kneeling as the priests spoke the rites over her somber and regally bent head.  The line of her exposed neck, carved and eternal.  Constance wondered what she herself had looked like at that same ceremony.

“It is a fine garden, my lady,” the third princess said.

“Thank you,” Constance said.

“And the roses!” She bent toward a buxom bloom, inhaling. “How do your gardeners do it?  In this heat.”

“I will send them by the third prince’s manor.  Such a lovely mistress of the house deserves just such roses.”

“You’re sweet.  Thank you for showing me this, and for having me today,” Princess Sabine smiled, turning back to her.

Constance returned the smile.  She had to squint a little, as unladylike as it was, and hold a fan to shield her eyes.  Sunlight poured between the high hedges like boiling water.

“This is one of my favorite spots at home,” Constance said, lightly putting her fingers to the other woman’s elbow to steer them into pleasanter shade. “So quiet.”

“I wonder if its solitude is due to the country of origin of its design.  It certainly can’t be the beauty of its flowers.”

So it starts.

Constance maintained her polite expression. “Certainly not, my lady.  Who could be so dogmatic as to politicize roses?”

“Oh, we are wise women of the world, aren’t we?  I’m sure we could imagine just such fools.”

“Or have met them?”

“Just so,” the other princess said lightly.

A pause, filled by the heat-muffled drill of cicadas.  The deafening  _whirrr whirrr_ that had shielded many a clandestine conversation over the years, the millenia.  In this old, old country full of old, old furies and passions.  Constance took a step toward her, and lowered her voice.

“My lady,” she said. “Perhaps it’s presumptuous, but I feel I should tell you.  We should all take care with our… affections.  In public.”

The third princess– minisculely, incrementally– raised a brow.

“I hope you…” Constance hesitated.  It was warm and she had a head full of cotton.

“Understand your meaning?” the other woman said, all glittering smiles and too many diamonds.

“Don’t take offence,” Constance answered softly.

White silk and satin and lace.  Golden chrysanthemums and silvered lilies embroidered by two dozen seamstresses.  A diadem of sapphires.  That had been Constance’s own coronation.  Pale, gossamer thin silk.  Had she had an elegant turn to the line of her neck as she bent to receive the blessing?  There was no one she could ask, who would not return to her a sneer or insincerity.

“I see,” the third princess said. “Then I hope you understand I will never make excuses for the affection I hold for my husband.”

Constance paused.  It was not quite an edge in the other woman’s voice; it was not a sharpening in her expression.  All the same, the air between them changed.  She saw it again, that moment not meant for her or her husband’s eyes.  Constance reinforced her smile.

“Of course,” she said. “I beg your forgiveness.”

Princess Sabine studied her.  Then, she inclined her head, subtly bending into a fraction of a curtsy.

They smiled at each other.

Later, society largely agreed that the gathering at the crown prince’s home was a great success, and the nobility had appropriately celebrated the third prince’s return home and marriage.

-

One has not bathed properly until a Corvali bath.  Of course, their Jiyeli cousins would disagree, and there is some debate about the origin of the large soaking pool and the cleansing rituals associated with it, but with the wealth of their empire, the Corvalis like to believe they have perfected it.

The very wealthy in this arid country spare no expense for the sort of white marble, delicately veined with dove gray, surfaces smooth as hot ice, that line their room-sized pools.  Architects compete with one another for intricately carved and cleverly designed tub complexes, while engineers quietly suffer headaches over such designs.  The sort of plumbing systems required for these pools were marvels unto themselves.

Even the less elite in Corvali society will go to great lengths to ensure a place of cleansing, even if it must be a natural oasis outside the village.  The connection to nature is often praised in these instances.  However, such bathing pools have strict rules about the use of perfumes and soaps, so as not to pollute the local water source.  Perhaps this was the origin of the custom of washing with lathers and rinsing before entering any pool, even those privately plumbed as in the richest palaces, and using only flowers to perfume the water.

For instance, a customary bath in the imperial palace for a princess of the third rank would proceed as such: your maidens of the wardrobe would help you undress, carefully peeling away your tools of political conflict and finesse.  Then, you would proceed through your bath’s antechamber, and be handed off to your bath attendants.  This is a highly coveted position, with two year’s worth of training and good pay to ensure your loyalty to a mistress in one of her more vulnerable moments.

These bath attendants would set you down on a warmed bench, covered in a fluffy cloth, and drench you in your first round of flowered water.  The flowers chosen vary according to fashion, the lady’s whim, and perhaps some other more subtle reason (a lover’s preference, a message to a rival, etc).  The attendants would then carefully work up a lather over your fine-blooded skin, working out all the tensions of deadly court intrigue, and rinse away the soap with a second round of flower water.  Then, a good scrubbing with fine white sand from an obscure beach on the northern coast that fielded a pirate raid at least once a week, mixed with pearls of yet more soap.  The final rinse, and the lady is ready to spend at least an hour soaking in her enormous marble tub, steaming and fragrant.

Often, noblewomen will use this time to confer with the closest of her servants, and receive reports on various machinations.  The seclusion of the room, and the intimacy of having only her most trusted by her, gives it an inclination toward secrecy.  And there is always an economy of bribes for bath attendants.  Until they’re found out, of course.  There was even a trend in third dynasty empresses to only employ illiterate bath attendants deprived of their tongues.

Of course, Corval has evolved from such barbaric practices.  Of particular fashion now are those girls skilled in Skaltan pressure point massage.  An ex-pat shaman from Skalt residing in the imperial palace currently makes a killing teaching this skill to the servants of noblewomen.  How relaxing it must be, immersed in warmth and floating away on wafts of crocus and orchid, with nimble fingers coaxing the paranoia and defenses out of your muscles.

And that is why it was highly irregular for the girl giving Sabine such treatment to clamp iron claws on her shoulders and shove her beneath the perfumed waters.

She gagged as she screamed, too startled to do anything else.  The girl kept thrusting her deeper, her strength alarming and violent.  Sabine’s throat and eyes and nose burned and the water was everywhere and just wouldn’t stop strangling her. And the world whirled again, as more weight slammed her deeper: the girl had leapt into the pool as well, and had her skilled fingers around Sabine’s jugular.

And then the weight was gone, and other hands pulled her up, up out of the flowered water, out of the depth and the heaviness.

The marbled room echoed with the angry yells of servant girls, their confused questions, their cries.  Sabine’s chest shot with agony, and she coughed, each wrack squeezing even more pain out of her lungs and throat.  She spat out searing water.  She couldn’t make sense of what was happening around her, what someone was saying to her, the face dominated her field of view.

“My lady,  _my lady_ ,” Victoire repeated calmly.  Of course.  Her dear Victoire could never be phased.  Not even by this.  She was a rock, unmoved by the world’s fury.

Sabine was grateful.

“Yes, yes,” she choked out. “Yes.”

Someone had covered her in a soft robe.  She sat up.  A few of the girls had the traitor pinned to the floor.  She stared blankly back at her mistress, her lips growing fat from a bloody gash, and her hair loose.  Her uniform drenched.

Victoire straightened. “Take her out.  Give her to the guards,” she commanded.

The guards.  They were no doubt hovering right outside from the clamor, but of course they couldn’t enter a princess’s bathchamber.  The girls obeyed, yanking up their prisoner.  Sabine leaned into Victoire, who held her up.

“Your prince has been careless,” Victoire murmured.

“Yes,” Sabine whispered. “It’s not like him.”

-

They were setting her hair into a pretty bundle of braids, out in the courtyard off her personal rooms, when Zarad returned home, early.

He stood at the edge, under the shade of the gallery running the perimeter of the court.  As always, he cut a fine figure in his easy robes and his broad chest.  He stood outside of the square of light and heat where she was seated, attended to as if it were a powdery boudoir.  The girls beside her paused in their work to curtsy to the prince, and went back to work.  They were well-trained.

Sabine had her back to him, but could see his expression in the reflection of the little stand mirror before her, moved here to the courtyard.

“Just a moment,” she told him. “They’re almost done.”

He was well-trained as well.  All of them here in this palace were well-trained enough to trim away the fat of their real feelings, and wear normal, bland looks of vacuity.  As if their wife hadn’t just been nearly drowned.

She refocused on her reflection before her.  It was a pretty style: the trailing curls framing the cheekbones she would forever be a bit vain about, the intricacy of the braids.  Quite pretty.  She would wear it again someday.  And there was a particular set of earrings that would be perfect.

Bruises were forming around her neck and on her shoulders.  She wore no make-up, and it bothered her.  He never cared.  Of course he never cares; he’d make some jibe equal parts endearment and leering that he liked her with nothing at all.  But her makeup wasn’t for him.  At least, not always.  But he was there, still as stone, present over her reflection’s shoulder.

She sighed.  Raising a hand, she stopped her maids.  Their hands and heads dropped.

“You’ve done well, girls,” Sabine told them. “You’re dismissed for now.  We’re not to be disturbed.”

They curtsied and left quietly, passing Zarad and softly closing the interior door behind them.

They were alone.

There could be little doubt over their aloneness, or else Zarad  would never advance on her like that, and scoop her up like that, squeeze so tightly if servants or others were near.  And he always knew.  The poor dear.  He would always know.

He would expose his flirting and the silly banter they exchanged to casual eyes, but not this.

Released, she pushed back to look at him properly.  His handsome face had released the tension of maintaining a bland expression, and was now slack in concern and agitation and anger.  She brushed a misplaced curl back into his head-wrapping.

“Are you…” he asked, eyes roaming over her, searching.

“I’m fine.”

“Sabine–”

“I’m fine,” she repeated. “I swallowed some bathwater.  I’m angry, more than anything.”

He closed his eyes, exhaling. “We should saddle up two horses.  Leave with the day’s departing merchants, and go back to our place on the coast,” he said softly.

“And live out our days in that cave?  That hole in the wall?” she stated flatly.

He eyed her, brows drawing in. “You love that place.”

“I do.  I love our little hideaway, and everything that’s happened there.  And I don’t want to ruin it with cowardice.”

He sighed, frustrated. “That’s not– I just want…”

“I know what you want,” Sabine said. “And it certainly isn’t running away.”

“ _I want to tear him apart_ ,” Zarad stated. “ _That’s_ what I want.  And I’ll never be able to.  It kills me.”

“So it  _was_ Aamir?”

He nodded. “The girl’s claiming she did it out of jealousy; in love with me.  The story makes sense, as it was incredibly sloppy for an assassination attempt.  Room full of people, and drowning would have taken more time than she would clearly have had.”

He snorted, cheeks tensing as he went on. “But there was something we missed in her background: she’s the niece of one of the crown prince’s butlers.  We missed it.”

“You found that out quickly.”

“It’s an important matter.”

“I know, just– it all seems uncharacteristically careless for Aamir.  Not an assassination attempt at all, then.  He’s trying to upset you.”

Zarad barked a bone-dry laugh. “And it’s working.”

Sabine shook her head. “We did wonder why he didn’t flirt with me at that party.”

“Should have listened to the crown princess’s warning,” he stated. “He knows now: I trust you.  I love you, and you me.  He can’t break us with machismo; he’ll try to break us with fear for the other’s sake.”

She sat back and groaned, “Next week– I’m supposed to visit the empress with her– Constance.”

He squeezed her hand. “She didn’t have anything to do with this.  You can trust  _that_.”

“But not her?”

He frowned. “Well… dear, she’s not like Aamir.”

“No?” she asked, tone artificially light and a brow raised.

“Sabine, she really– out of us all, she perhaps suffers more than anyone because of him.  And she really isn’t like Aamir.”

“I feel sorry for her, really I do, love, but I’ve only just met her.  And you don’t know her, either,” she told him. “I’m not doubting her goodness, but the strength of her spine.  And really, what’s the use of one without the other in this palace?”

He sat, considering her.  The sun hadn’t yet set, and had heated them to a nearly uncomfortable degree.  The tall, elegant palms lining the perimeter of the court helped cut the sear of sun, with the dappled chaff of light and shadow shivering across the mosaic tiles.  She stared back at him.  And then she had to swallow and look away.

“You’re really angry,” he said softly.

“Of course I am.  All I know is, she introduces me to that poisonous woman of the empress’s, then she–  _warns_ me about being affectionate with you.  So, yes, I’m angry,” she shot back. Then tried to gentle her tone. “It’s my home, isn’t it?  In my own home…”

And he took her back into his arms. “Yes, yes it is.  I’m sorry.  I should have kept you safe.”

She pushed back enough to look him in the eye. “Then make me safer.  And let me help.  It’s the POW reforms you’re pushing for, isn’t it?  Aamir’s found out you’re behind Grand Secretary Muhil, hasn’t he?”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he answered softly.

She sighed.  And then she couldn’t keep it up anymore; she leaned back into him, into his embrace.  In the end, as long as she had this, she could keep going.  Just for now, let her have this.

“We’ll fight it, love,” he whispered into her hair.

“Good,” she murmured back.


	10. A Kiss (Sabine/Zarad)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short prompt fill that's cute and stuff. 8)))

Sabine treads the halls, quite minding her own business– well, not exactly since she is in search of a certain enigmatic and handsome  _someone_ – when she notices the odd absence of the laundry maids, making their rounds with their great wicker baskets, and of the various butlers running errands for their young nobles.  This particular hall winds precariously away from the bright charms and activity of the main drawing rooms and other parlors, but still, there ought to be at least  _some_ of the more unseen residents of the Isle conducting their business here.

It is when she finally comes to this realization that hands grab her and pull her (her heels sliding on the polished marble floors and tangling in her petticoats) into a deep, dark alcove.

She falls into a familiar chest and its familiar scent, just as a familiar voice whispers into her hair.

“This is a lovely surprise, my darling, but you do have the most wonderful and terrible timing.”

His voice is equal parts amusement, fondness, and uneasiness.

She struggles to still the spike in her pulse from the sudden capture, the sudden closeness.  Her face pressed the warmth and overbearing scent of his bare skin (could he not cover that up on occasion, really!), the line of their bodies parallel and compressed into a confusion of silks and silken hair.  She still surprised herself sometimes.  Getting flustered and excited over him.

Sabine shifted silently, trying to get a look at his face.

Zarad seemed to understand.  He whispered, “I’m hunting.  A very curious, very skittish prey.”

His voice is so soft, it barely disturbs the stray curls at her temples. Yet even that bit of warm breath stirs goosebumps behind her neck.  Her reaction was not his aim, she knew, and he was referring to something completely unrelated to her– some secret, some morsel of information.  But still.  Her heart fluttered, and it was all very exciting, no?

“I see,” Sabine whispered back.

The little movements of her lips, brushing against his chest, seemed to make him pause.  His muscles tensed.  And an unbidden smile crept into her mouth.  And surely he must be as aware of the crush of her breast against him, and the way their hips sheared against one another, and the grip of each other’s fingers– he must be as aware of it all as she was.

At the corner of her eye, she saw his throat work over some lump.

But they stood stock still, pressed together, and listened to the silence outside in the hall.

Nothing stirred.  Not for an eternity, it seemed.

It was an unusual situation, to be sure, but Sabine trusted Zarad’s judgment.  If he deemed it necessary to his machinations to silently sit entwined together (against all codes of decorum) in some little out of the way nook– well, who was she to complain?

And then–  _finally_ , Zarad’s steady and utterly-controlled breath caught.  Outside, just at the edge of her range of hearing, Sabine could distinguish a set of footsteps.  Unhurried, they fell heavy and assured.  The steady pattern echoed in the broad and empty hall.  When the person approached the place just outside of their alcover, Zarad’s fingers, entangled in the silk of her skirt, unconsciously tightened.

But the stranger walked on, and Zarad’s soft exhale into her curls tickled at her ear.

Sabine shifted.  They both relaxed enough to break away from the persistent heat between them.  But they were still so near that his long, noble nose brushed the tip of hers, their long lashes nearly tangled, and their breath fell hot and damp on each other’s lips.

Zarad’s golden eyes bore down on her.

“I should go,” he told her softly.  His hands clutched at the bunches of ribbon and silk flowers at her back.

Sabine smiled, tilted her head. “Then go.”

“I have hunting to do,” he continued.

She leaned deeper into his arms and locked her gaze on his mouth, the edges of it twitching with warring urges.

“Then go,” she repeated, only a warm breath from his lips.

And this was really too much to keep up– so she kissed him.  Just the smallest of movements with how tightly they were pressed, and she touched gentle lips to his, unmindful of the way their hearts violently shuddered together and the way gravity and the earth itself shifted.  What a small thing, hardly the first for her or for anyone anywhere through history.  But it felt momentous and tiny and huge and, quite frankly, not nearly enough.

Especially if was going to make that little exhale of disappointment whenever they parted from a kiss.

“You,” he told her quietly, staring at her, “are a terrible distraction.”

She couldn’t help laughing softly, and inhaling when he bent into her again, resuming the kiss.  It was light and teasing, and then threatened to become  _not_ quite light and teasing.  So she stopped it with a few fingers on his chin.

“And should I keep distracting you?” she whispered into his lips.  And no one can say she is not without her own personal cruelties with the way she rubbed her nose into his cheek and pressed her breast against his chest.

Zarad pulled away fully, his eyes slid away from her and his mouth wryly caught between a smirk and an unhappy frown.

“No,” he stated quietly. “I really must go.”

She released him.  They stood apart, both still lingering in their mingled warmth, and she could tell he wanted to come up with some flirtatious, outrageous, ridiculous remark to cover the way he couldn’t make himself move further.  But his wit seemed quite departed, and it did not delight her to a small degree that, indeed, the cause of his suddenly dull tongue was  _her_.

Sabine took another step away from him.

She smiled. “Then go.”

He glanced at her, clearly bemused, but having the good sense to depart before either of them made a move that would be untimely– untimely, and yet what a delicious waste of time.


	11. Serah and Armand (Sabine/Zarad)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because I thought it was hilarious that they played parts in separate couples, and I like inflicting Sabine and Zarad on all the other unsuspecting delegates.

Clarmont had a splitting headache. **  
**

He imagined the chopping block in the wood yard back home felt much as he did, with an unseen axe rhythmically pounding out a jig into his brain.  He had never been much prone to headaches, but he’d slept poorly and for only a few hours last night.  And he’d missed breakfast.  And he was most likely about to begin balding over recent stresses.

On top of that– although he would never question the endeavors of  the esteemed chaperones– this theatrical was a mess.

Delegates milled about.  A few actually put on some pretense of working– the costumers playing with thread as they chatted in circles with gowns and suits in their laps, the actors waving about scripts to emphasize their points about last night’s dinner.  Most did not even make such efforts and directed the staff to fetch all necessary implements for tea.  As well as comfier chairs.

He sighed.

“Lord Clarmont, there you are.”

He turned. “Lady Avalie.”

Avalie approached with her pleased cat’s smile and a trail of tinkling bells. “Come, the main cast is rehearsing backstage.”

She put an iron hand into the crook of his arm, leading him away.  Clarmont obediently followed.  At least it was darker backstage.  And quieter.  Unfortunately, it was also in better supply of Revairan royals; Princess Gisette glanced up as Avalie swept the red velvet curtains apart and practically shoved Clarmont before her.  The pale princess’s eyes roved over them, found them wanting, and returned to the script in her hands.

Still, he smiled, per usual.  He would have to be particularly careful this week.  Especially if this headache persisted.  At least Princess Jaslen had given him the part of Sir Horus, and not the partner to Gisette’s Vienna.  No, his Serah stood a few paces away, giggling with Prince Armand.

Zarad spotted him. “Here he is, our esrtwhile knight.”

He gave an overdone bow to Clarmont, with a fluttering flourish with the script in his hand.  Beside him, Lady Sabine was giving the prince a look that would be disapproving but for the curl at her lips.

“Really, enough, you–”

“Now, dear,” Zarad stated, turning back to her with serious eyes. “I know it will be hard to part from me for even a moment.  But we must all make our sacrifices for this important production.  Perhaps the most important work of our lives.”

“I see you still persist in this bad habit of speaking for everyone,” Sabine said. “But I suppose it  _would_  be the most important work in the life of an incorrigible flirt.”

The two of them had been like this for over four weeks now.  The glances and the laughter and the verbal dances gradually culminating in the Matchmaker’s approval a week past.  The pair seemed unable to look away from each other; after the previous week’s tribulations, one could hardly blame them.  To the side, Gisette wore a pleasant expression that, on close inspection, was entirely unpleasant.

Zarad winked.  “Now, now.  We’re not alone; don’t flirt too much lest we become a nuisance among good society.  And you must remember to be better to Sir Horus than you are to me.  Not everyone shares my magnanimous nature.”

Clarmont cleared his throat. “I’m sure Lady Sabine will be quite fine.”

“Yes, of course,” Avalie interjected.  She clapped a hand to her clipboard for emphasis. “We’ve some of the finest of our delegates here, all eager to collaborate in a show of international harmony.  Yes?”

They all smiled back at her, with various levels of thinly veiled sarcasm.

Avalie smiled as well. “Lovely!  Now.  A bit of rehearsing is due, yes?”

The four leads collected themselves and moved about the backstage area at Avalie’s direction.  They read from their scripts in slightly stilted voices as they tried to match their actions to the lines.  Clamont wasn’t a frequent theatre-goer, but even he could tell this was a disaster waiting to happen with amateurs like themselves given a week’s notice to practice.  Still, Zarad amused with his over-performing and his sidebars.  Gisette seemed committed to appearing to her best, even if at the expense of engaging with the rest of them.  And Sabine took on the role of sweet Serah with infectious cheer, helping him along with a twinkle in her eyes.

And yet it quickly became clear there was a problem.

In act two, scene one, Vienna brings Serah to visit the queen, conveniently at the same time that Sir Horus and Prince Armand attend to her.  Zarad slouched in a chair, beside an empty chair representing his absent aunt, with a bored expression not entirely affected.  His sidebars and interest had fallen off as their collective confusion impeded their lines.  Horus stood beyond the queen and the prince, practically stuttering platitudes to Serah.

At the moment Serah moved to go to him, with her own starry eyes and blushing compliments, Clarmont saw as Armand’s head turned with her passing and a new expression flit over his features.  As Sabine passed by with flowered sashes from her bustle trailing lightly, Zarad reached out a hand.

And tugged.

Sabine yelped. “What–”

She stumbled backward inelegantly, arms windmilling.  Regaining her feet, she whirled to glared at Zarad and his carefully blasé expression.

“You see, dear Horus, my bosom companion?” he said. “What a clumsy girl.  Utterly unfit to be a match to such a fine knight as yourself.”

Momentarily annoyed, Sabine schooled herself back into character. “Oh, Your Highness, do forgive me.  How terribly silly of me to trip like that.  I know you are such a good soul you would never hold that against me, and what a splendid friend you are, to consider Sir Horus so much.”

Clarmont coughed and quickly interjected, trying to steer back to the actual lines and away from the looks Serah was shooting at Armand.  Vienna’s cool smile had become decidedly icy.

And then, in the fourth act when Lady Matterly creates the first mess between the couples, Serah, with a very much un-Serah-like gleam in her eye, oversold her entreaty to Prince Armand on her cousin’s behalf.  She begged him to give Vienna another chance, her hand on his arm turning into a closer lingering against his side.  Her hand reached up to trail against his jaw as she gave her best pure-as-sugar-Serah-pout.

Swallowing, Armand agreed to reconsider his opinions.

And then somehow, the confessional scenes in the fifth act got side-tracked at the mere two lines Armand and Serah were supposed to exchange, which turned into entire monologues about women like stars and men like vain and empty-headed birds– parrots even, that repeated certain lines.

“Perhaps,” Princess Gisette said. “Certain roles should be switched.  Clearly, there is an imbalance in this casting.”

She idly pushed a single lock of pale hair from her face with one of those pleasant-unpleasant smiles of hers.

Avale tapped on her clipboard with her own beatific smile. “Any changes can be addressed to Princess Jaslen.  Yourself.  Otherwise, I would advise all of us to commit our lines to memory.  Surely such a task will be considered worthy and enjoyable as it will prevent embarrassment all of us delegates.”

Clarmont agreed readily.  The troublesome couple did as well, albeit with completely unabashed smiles and conspiratorial glances at each other.

Clarmont still had a headache, and now all these lines to remember on top of everything else.  But he had the feeling this play would be anything but boring.  A disaster, yes.  But boring?

He highly doubted that.


	12. Four Years and Seven Months (Sabine/Baron Namaire)

“Thank you, that will be all,” Victoire said.

The handful of maids fussing with the few parcels they’d brought from the Guyenne estate looked up.  Two hat boxes and a steamer trunk that if opened would only be half-packed with gowns and dresses leaning towards unfitness for the station of a baroness.  A few other boxes.  One jewelry case with some of the better pieces Lady Guyenne had been willing to impart to her eldest daughter.  It was a good thing the baron had already purchased a new wardrobe for his bride, along with new furnishings, jewelry.  A horse the baroness would probably seldom ride.  He’d commissioned a new formal garden with a delicate little garden house perfect for tea; it would be finished within the month.

It was good insight for him to make all these preparations.  If Sabine and Victoire had come to the Namaire estate with only their little battered cases, it would have incurred the derision of the staff.  And in fact they seemed to be doing just that now, with the way the handful of maids were glancing up at Victoire and back to each other.

Sabine turned from the window.  She cleared her throat and pointedly arched a brow.

The girls murmured their acquiescence and quietly filed out.

When the door clipped behind them, Sabine looked up at Victoire for a long pause.  The arched bow dropped and tightness pulled in around her lips.  She exhaled.  And she looked far more her seventeen years.

“Thank god,” Sabine murmured, letting herself lean into the window frame.

Victoire advanced on her and gestured with her fingers. “Come.  You should rest.”

She groaned, but straightened anyway and turned around.  

Victoire unpinned the veil (blue for the girl’s vivid blue eyes) from the back of her hair, tutting. “Really.  We sent the things ahead of us.  These girls should have had everything put away hours ago.”

Sabine just hummed.  The lands rolled away from the estate in pleasant green swells and dips, lightly touched by a tepid, cloud-filtered noon light.  The morning had been brighter, with yellow sunlight flooding the small chapel where they’d had the ceremony.  Close family and friends only.  The baron’s neighbors, a minor noble gentleman and his wife, had attended on his side.  Lord and Lady Guyenne and the oldest son, Chretien, had sat for Sabine.  It had been small and quiet.

Fingers moving with mechanical swiftness, Victoire unlaced the simple dress the girl had worn, and deposited her of corset and skirts.  At the mother-of-pearl inlaid vanity, they unpinned her hair.

Victoire glanced up at her in the mirror. “Are you worried?”

Sabine slid a finger around a curl, twirling it. “About tonight?  No.”

Victoire pulled away a set of braids and began unraveling them.  Her pale fingers stood stark against dark curls.  She remained quiet.  It wasn’t in her nature to push for more details; Sabine didn’t expect it and had no compunctions about going on if that was her desire.

“I’ve heard too many of my mother’s stories to be worried about that,” Sabine said, closely inspecting the end of a mahogany lock.

Victoire said nothing, and kept working.  When her charge was left in a simple shift that bared tawny, chestnut legs and her hair streamed over round shoulders, Victoire stood and went to draw back the silken blankets from the bed.

Bare feet padding quietly, Sabine crossed the parquet for the enormous and elaborately-carved bureau.  It opened to a line of jacquard, damask, chiffon, and great swathes of silk embroidery and beading.  She put out a hand and ran it through the dresses.  Humming (poorly), her fingers plucked at the different materials, feeling the whisper slide of the silks and the heft of the fine woolens.  She moved on to the other cabinet beside it, to the furs.  The beautiful, beautiful furs.  She sank her palms into the softness.

Sabine closed the cabinet doors. “Do you think I made the right choice?”

“You should rest,” Victoire said.  She paused before the pile of their cases. “I’ll have a bath readied for you before dinner.”

Sabine wandered to the sitting area before the empty fireplace; delicately fluted cherrywood and pearled upholstery.  She ran a finger over the curved back of the settee.

“I’m not tired, really,” she said.

Victoire popped open the trunk.  She leaned back and put her hands to her hips as she considered the contents, most on the verge of being threadbare.  It would probably be best to just throw it all out.  She glanced up.

“Sabine,” she sighed.

She stood looking up at one of the many paintings in the room: a picturesque Corvali gardenscape.

“There’s no point in regrets now,” Victoire stated. “We have work to do.”

The baroness finally turned back to her.  

They’d spent a year getting here.  Bribing some shepherd boys to throw rocks under the carriage of the relative of a neighbor of the baron’s, these people being old friends of the Guyenne family.  Old enough friends that, should they be laid up in a local inn and coincidentally run into Lady Guyenne and her daughter, they would be obliged to renew their friendship.  Thus, a few dinners, an introduction to the Baron of Namaire, and several more dinners and teas and hunts later– and etcetera and etcetera.

And now– now that they could afford to dump that sad trunk’s contents into the fireplace and be done with it.  Now with all of those fine gowns the girl could at least begin to look the part even if she didn’t feel it.  The rest would follow.  Look, even now Sabine had something like confidence in her gaze.

She nodded.

“I know,” Sabine said.

She finally went to the bed, and Victoire drew the curtains, already making a mental tally of what needed to be kept from the old life.

-

**Four Years and Six Months**

“I simply don’t see the point,” Sabine said.

She leaned into the elbow she had planted on the breakfast table and idly twirled a small spoon about the porcelain walls of her teacup, making random little chimes.  Before her spread plates of fresh fruit, bread and cheese, and hard-boiled eggs in their little stands.  Across from her sat the baron.

Enzo IV of Namaire’s long frame fit the delicate gazebo furniture with surprising elegance, and his hands manipulated his teacup with surprising grace.  Surprising if only on account of his unmistakeable height and spareness in dress and in personal manner.  His tailor cut his jackets and waistcoats with clean lines, always in blacks and grays.  His pale gray eyes matched the peppering in his trim beard and hair, their blackness offset by his tanned calf’s leather skin.  With a sharp click, he put down the cup in his hand.

He considered her. “You don’t see the point of learning how not to sound like the farmer’s daughter at formal dinners.”

She stared back, lips stiff. “That’s pleasant.  Quite pleasant of you.”

“You also don’t see the point of sharpening that wit rather than relying on that pout?”

“My pout serves me quite well,” she said, her spine curling self-consciously. “And nothing about Madame Illais or Ser Grenbarrow would ever sharpen a thing of mine.”

He sipped at his tea.  Sabine gazed at him for a long time as the silence between them lengthened.  The garden around them still held slightly raw edges, with vegetation not quite settled in and nervously holding their boughs apart from one another.  As if the damask roses and adolescent wisteria were a party of ladies not yet on good acquaintances.  Warm morning light staved off chilly dew, but heat would set in later.

Namaire removed the napkin from his lap and tossed it onto the table.  He stood, gesturing to her.

“Come.  You’ve been tardy to your economics lesson enough.”

She threw her own napkin down.

“Oh, very well,” she said, taking his arm.

The waiting staff at the perimeter of the gazebo descended upon their breakfast table to whip it clean as the baron and baroness stepped out onto the path back towards the house.

“If you really want me to attend to an economics lesson,” she went on. “You could give me the household books instead.  Much more useful, no?”

Her voice attempted a playful lilt.

His gaze slid toward her. “I have told you already.  That is not your concern.”

“It’s my right as your wife.”

They stopped in the middle of path, the clicking of their heels silencing.  He swiveled toward her.

“Is that as far as your ambition goes, Sabine?”

“What–”

“Tallying up bags of sugar and cabbages, handing out payroll?”

She tilted her chin up at him.

He sighed. “You’re not creating convoluted schemes to keep all your creditors in the dark about each other here.”

Her jaw tightened. “You are not a gentleman.”

“And you are not a lady.  Not yet.  The house will take care of itself.  In the meantime, you ought to listen to my counsel.”

With the hand she had tucked into his arm, he nudged her back along their path.  She followed with a small huff.

“Fine,” she stated.

-

**Four Years and Two Months**

The blue-emerald silk of Sabine’s train disappeared up into the shadows of the carriage’s interior, and the baron followed after.  As the coachman called out and the team pulled them all into a lurching start, Namaire plucked his own hat off, leaving it  beside him on the plush bench.  He pushed open the small carriage windows on either side.  Spilt from the slowly sinking sun, rosey evening light and breezes crept into the tight confines of the vehicle.

Namaire leaned back into his cushions and sighed. “I told you to stay.  Comtois would have brought you back.”

“And suffer the gossip?  For once you shock  _me_.”

“I’m far too old and rich to care for what the gossips say of me.”

“That’s all very well, but what of myself?”

“You?  You are far pretty and young and quite securely married to worry about your reputation.”

Across from him, she choked a bit, hand flying up to her long, tawny neck.  She stared at him.

“What?” he demanded.

“You really aren’t feeling well, are you?  You just called me pretty.”

He exhaled and turned to the rolling streets outside their carriage window.

“You needn’t look so vexed about it,” she stated.  She half-stood, careful of the vehicle’s sway, and moved the black silk hat over to her vacated seat so that she might take its place. “Be assured.  I never trust men that pay too many compliments or too few.”

She slipped a gloved hand under the hand he had resting on his knee.  Namaire glanced at her.  They inspected each other: her full brow cocked playfully, the sweat she could now see on closer inspection at his temple, the play of pinkish shadows across her smooth skin, the thickness of his eyelids.  Deliberately, he squeezed her fingers once before removing her hand to her own lap.

“Comtois is a good influence on you,” he said over the surprise in her expression.

She considered him before leaning back into her corner. “Is he?”

The lanterns and tall, pike-like tools of the street lamp lighters whisked by the open windows.  Inexplicably, he could smell pine resin and fir trees.  Like the winter he spent in the Arlish countryside, riding about with the freezing air burning his nostrils.  So many seasons ago.

“We’ll leave for the summer house before the week’s end,” he said. “The heat will soon be intolerable.  Take in the shade and the cool air about the lake for a month and come back to town for the season’s close.”

“Very well.  I suppose everyone else will be gone soon, too.”

“And I want you to take up a project.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh?”

“There’s a parcel of land adjacent to ours that I’ve left alone for too long.  I want you do something with it.”

“‘Something’?”

“Something.  Find a tenant or sell it or whatever you can think of.  Figure it out.  Ask Comtois for help if you like.”

She watched the unrelenting placidity and severity of his expression.  Her fingers sought out her little tasseled pouch and loosened the drawstring, pulling out a handkerchief.  Despite the unrelenting placidity and severity of his expression, she leaned forward to dab at his temple.  The heat was indeed beginning to linger overlong into twilight now that summer waxed full.

“Very well,” Sabine said.

He leaned away. “What is this?”

“A handkerchief, lordship.  Quite clearly– a handkerchief.”

-

**Three Years and Ten Months**

After the coolness of the hall, her room’s warmth enveloped him, seeped into the chilled crannies of his woolen outer layers.  With the wave of warmth rolling over him came the scent of dried lavender and shepherd’s purse, several bundles of which hung along the mantle with silky ribbons.  The fire in the grate leapt and billowed.  The parquet floors shone with a dark murkiness, like a pond at night.  The furniture was polished, the curtains and velvety upholstery kept free from dust and cobwebs.

Everything was in its place, and was quite as it should be.

The far away clocks deeper in the house rang the midday hour.  Her maid, the strange pale one, was not in the room.  He approached the four post bed.  A pot of yarrow root tea steamed on the bedside table.  An empty teacup, more dried lavender, a jug of water resting in an ice bath.  He sat on the edge of the bed, and he felt eyes on the back of his neck.

“My lord.”

Sabine looked up at him.  She’d woken.  Maybe before he walked in, maybe shortly after.

As she shifted to sit up, moving slowly, he reached for the teapot and poured out a cup.  He handed it to her, and she accepted with the saucer carefully balanced in her fingers.  Their eyes met.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

She turned the cup around in languid circles. “Better than yesterday.”

He nodded.  The silence between them grew.  His bones itched with restlessness; he hadn’t gone on his morning ride, the same ride he’d taken since he’d turned eleven and his own father had brought him along to cover the hills and gullies their blood knew by instinct.  He’d missed plenty of these rides before.  Being away for the social season, traveling, illness.  But as the years went by it was harder and harder to recover from their absence.  As if his momentum became more and more permanent the older he got; his ability for malleability slowly crumbling away.

“Sabine,” he said.  He reached out and took one of her hands. “I’ve made a mistake.”

She didn’t say anything.  Her warm fingers held his, long, slender fingers– not even the shadows of callouses lingered under her hands, the traces of the world she’d come from.

“It was a mistake…” he trailed off, his focus going elsewhere. “It needs to be let go.  This idea of an heir.”

Her eyes sharpened. “But you… you have no male relatives.”

“I know.  Everything will go to you when I die.”

“You– you just… So what, one misfortune, and you want to give up?”

“It’s not important.  I assure you, you will be taken care of.”

“My mother was pregnant twelve times, you know.  She had nine children.  These things happen.”

“I’m aware.  Sabine.”

She paused at his tone.  Then she exhaled and shook her head. “So what?  You– alone, without consideration for what others want– You make the decision and that is the end of the matter?”

He leaned forward to catch and hold her gaze. “I’m sorry.  All of this is my fault.  You can blame me.  I’m sorry.”

She sank back into her feathered cushions, jaw setting.

“For so long, I’ve done what was right.  What was necessary,” he sighed. “What was expected of me and my name.  But I’m tired.”

He studied her, framed by her dark curls and white linens.

“If it’s a child you want, you can… do as you like.  I won’t say anything.  I’ll accept it.  But it can’t be me.”

“That’s not what I want.”

“What do you want?”

Her lips pressed thin.  She put aside the teacup. “I don’t know.  I… I don’t know.  Just– yesterday, now this…”

The door opened.

“Beg your pardon, your lordship.”

The strange pale maid, Victoire, stopped in the doorway with a kitchen girl holding a tray standing behind her.  Namaire stood.

Sabine tightened her hold on his hand. “Wait.”

He looked back.

Her eyes searched over him. “Is this about your first wife?”

He gave her fingers one last squeeze before bending down to ghost a kiss on her forehead.

“Eat and rest,” he told her, already moving away. “I’ll check on you again later.”

-

**Three Years and Nine Months**

She pulled the fur collar of her coat closer.  The staff cleaned the room regularly, but not near as often as the rooms actually in use.  Blues and pinks from last light painted the objects of the chamber, crawling up the tall empty vaults and over the chill floors.  It had not gotten to the point where all things fabric and vulnerable had to be moved elsewhere or covered in case of weevils, dust mites.  White shirts and dark jackets and well-used riding habits filled the wardrobes.  A pair of oiled riding boots sat by the door, the chestnut leather dull in the blue light, a riding crop leaning against them as if waiting for their owner.  Pile of books with places marked.

The desk still had the remains of correspondence littered across it.  An open inkwell had dried up with a quill sitting in it.  The fireplace was empty.

Over the mantle hung a beautiful cityscape of the old Revairan capital flooded with golden light.  An interesting choice.  Where most hung their prized portraits, he had chosen a painting of a place that had never existed.  At least not in that manner.

There were portraits, of course.  Elsewhere in the room.  Here, a depiction of the young man who figured in another painting, down in the major library.  This one was a few years younger, but it was clearly the same man.  The tanned skin, like the underside of leather.  The sharp grey eyes.  The full and dark hair.

If not for the curl of a smile and the glitter of laughter in his eyes– clearly comfortable features for the lines of his face– the man could well be her husband, some decades ago.

She looked away.  Various other descendents of the Namaire name gazed down at her from the walls.  Some of the lords and ladies stood out as family members by way of marriage, but they all became assimilated into the same expressions and coloring eventually.  Would some day come when she herself peered down from a wall, just one out of many other Namaires?

She crossed to the desk.  Over the smooth mahogany curls of the desk’s back, a woman’s portrait hung, washed in the demure colors of a winter’s day close.  The curtains were already open.  She knew Namaire came in here sometimes.

The woman in the painting was older.  A few pale lines trailed through her hair which she hadn’t bothered to dye.  Or saw no need to.  She wasn’t beautiful.  But what use was beauty?  Sabine’s mother was beautiful, she herself was beautiful, but look where that had gotten them.  Either stupid and useless or unhappy and with an unattractive temperament.

She sighed.

“I miss my mother,” she told the empty room.

After some time, she left for the warmer parts of the house.

-

**Years Afterward**

“Ah, I see now,” Sabine said with hauteur, the effect a little ruined by the twitch of her lips. “I thought you two invited me to tea for the pleasure of my company.  Rather, you wanted to use me for advice.”

Penelope’s jaw dropped, her eyes widening in horror.  Cordelia caught on, but still squirmed with being teased, trying not giggle.  Giggling– how it would ruin her dignity.

“Oh, no, of course not!” Penelope said. “I’m always eager to spend time with you– oh, please don’t think–”

Sabine cut her off and patted her hand. “I’m only joking, dear.  And thank you.  I’m also always eager for your company.  Both of you, dear pets.”

Cordelia considered her with her serious, dark eyes. “If it is too forward of us to ask…”

“No, not at all.  Hmm.  Well, things as they are– and we three being so fortunate as to have the choices we do– I can’t say that one should be stubborn about hoping for some idealized romance.  A relationship like marriage takes a great deal of work, and that may be the more important element than any initial infatuation.”

Cordelia nodded.  Penelope’s eyes wavered with uncertainty.

Sabine continued. “I would consider any woman fortunate to be permitted the sort of freedom and understanding my husband gave me.  We spent the seasons in town where I met many lovely people and made many valuable contacts.  Winters on the estate were a bit dull, I suppose, but occasionally we did have friends spends a few weeks with us.  I was afforded my own portion of wealth to do with as I pleased.  I wasn’t always successful, but I did learn a great deal.”

She sipped at her tea. “All in all, I was fortunate indeed.  Respect and space are the better parts of a good marriage between nobility.”

-

**Eight Months**

“My lady?”

Sabine rotated her neck to inspect another angle to her face.  She pointed out a minuscule smudge in her eye makeup to Victoire.

“Yes?” she called to the door.

It opened a fraction.  A maid dipped a knee and straightened.

“His Lordship wishes to call.”

Sabine did her best to keep her face muscles slack for Victoire’s brushes as she answered. “Let him in.”

The door clicked and a chair was moved near her vanity.  

“Good evening, my lord,” Sabine said.

“Good evening.”

Victoire finished, moving aside and curtsying to the baron.  He placed a wooden box of deep grain into her lap.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Happy Birthday, wife.”

She raised a brow at him. “Really?  You actually sound a bit cheerful.”

“I’m not always a decrepit shell of despondency.”

She balanced the box on her palm, feeling its weight. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“I’ve been merely adequate in my gifts for the last few years.  I think I’m overdue.  Open it.”

He handed her a little key and she unlocked the intricately inlaid lid of the box.  Emerald velvet lined its interior and the necklace form sitting inside.  The necklace itself sparkled; a broad choker of diamonds arranged in a flowering pattern.  Worn, it would fall from where the neck met jaw down to the clavicle.

Her finger grazed over the fine-cut stones, and she struggled to find her words. “I… I doubt even the queen has something so…”

“Careful.  You’re showing quite a bit of your vanity.  But you’ve always been weak to shiny things.”

Her eyes cut to him in annoyance.  He merely gestured to Victoire, who lifted Sabine’s hair and pinned it quickly.  She pulled the necklace from the box with care and enclosed Sabine’s neck with it.

“Well,” she said, looking into the mirror. “Thank you.”

Namaire nodded.  He unfolded from his seat, patted her on the shoulder, and departed the room.  Some arrangement downstairs probably called him, or some other task for the evening’s host.

Sabine turned her jaw about in the mirror, watching herself and her angles.  Victoire worked to redo her hair to suit the new present.  Their eyes met in the reflection.

“Don’t say a thing,” Sabine told her.

“I haven’t said a word,” she said flatly.

-

**Years Afterward**

“–and that is the story of my greatest failure as a woman of noble consequence.”

She giggled, the one hand she had free from Zarad’s arm flying up to her face.  It took her a moment to realize his laugh was more of a weak chuckle.  Turning down another nondescript hedge row of the garden maze, she peered up at him.

“What?”

He quickly smiled. “Nothing.”

“Really,” she said.

He stopped walking.  His fingers grazed his chin as his eyes slid away.  She felt a turn in her stomach; his nerves made her nervous, but at the same time she felt a flush of pride that he was showing his nerves at all to her.  She knew quite well that he wouldn’t be like this if they weren’t alone.

He sighed. “I shouldn’t really…”

“Well, I’m too curious now.  You might as well just say it.”

He paused, still with that lingering half-smile. “You… you still call him ‘his lordship’.”

“Oh.  And… and that bothers you?”

“No!  I mean,” he sighed. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

She studied him.  The silence between them stretched.

She shifted. “I’m glad you did, but I don’t know what to say.  It’s not…”

“You don’t have to explain yourself.  I’m sorry.”

“I…” she shook her head. “Look, I’m late to an invitation.  Let’s talk about this later.”

“Of course.”

-

**Five Months**

In late spring, while they were preparing to leave the estate for town and the social season, he began taking a long siesta on the conservatory’s settee every morning after his rides.  An unfamiliar pain had seeped into his back at some point.  Teas and unguents did little.  Staying home instead of enduring the journey to the capital and the following balls, luncheons, and events tempted him.

He went along anyway, silently perusing a book with his baroness across from him.   In town, few raised a brow when Sabine floated about the usual scenes and social circles without him; he had always been averse to excessive company and tiresome conversation.

As the heat of summer rolled down through the valleys into the streets, Sabine left to visit for a fortnight with a friend who’d just had a child.  It was early to already be making the migration to the summer homes, but Namaire departed some days after she did for the cooler airs off the lake.

She returned from her visit during a sunny afternoon.  Her heels echoed before her approach down the hall outside of the small dining room where he was sitting at a light lunch with the broad wall of patio doors propped open.

“…will be here next week, so please send for more fruit and make sure cook has plenty of pastries ready.  And I think we should go ahead and have a pig slaughtered.  You mentioned the bacon was low?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And go through all the guest rooms and replace all the old linens– there you are–”

She swept into the room and to the table, dipping into a quick curtsey.  But she stopped a few steps from him.  He looked up from his paper.

“You’re back from Odille, then?” he asked. “…What?”

She looked away as a servant pulled a chair for her.  She sat and waved away the girl about to put down a place setting for her, as well as all the others in the room.  He raised a brow.

She leaned toward him. “Have you lost weight?”

He slapped down his paper and frowned.

“Has no one mentioned anything?” she said, eyeing his plate of picked over food. “You don’t look well.”

“I…” He wasn’t sure what to say.  Since her departure he’d only had the company of the summer home servants who were far too leery of him to ever make a comment of a personal nature.

“We’re sending for a physician,” she said.

In the three days it took for a runner to reach the capital and a doctor to make the trip out to the summer house, he fell under a feverish weakness. Tinctures and teas and unguents were provided and the resultant rise and fall of his fever sent him in a whirl of numbingly chill days and scorching sweat-soaked nights.  His temperature broke after a week.  Sabine had canceled the hosting plans they’d had and checked on him often.  At least, he assumed that’s what she did.  The majority of times he woke she was beside him.

Although the fever broke, an insistent fatigue plagued him, left him bedridden and unable to stomach much food.  The physician stayed on.  A good thing as the fever resurfaced.  A cycle of inflamed wasting away and tepid recoveries lasted for weeks.  When it finally looked as though he was on a definite recovery, Sabine made the arrangements for a slow and careful return to the Namaire estate.

He told her he’d go on alone; she should attend the last events of the season in town.

“No point,” she said. “Anyone worth seeing is long gone.  I much more fancy a rest at home.  Maybe I’ll actually improve on my embroidery.  Or my pianoforte playing.”

She was lying.  She was a terrible liar, and never had the perseverance to really become more than proficient at any lady’s skill.

“Your skills include having good taste in dresses and being a good drinker.”

She patted his knee across the carriage. “That’s the spirit.”

-

**A Fortnight Afterward**

Victoire paused in the south hall.  At the hall’s end, where it created a junction with another hall, two maids passed.  Aimee and Lan.  Glancing behind her, Victoire reached down and slipped off her shoes with their tapping heels.  She backtracked on her stockings to a door she’d passed.  Sabine had requested to take tea in the green parlor, and Aimee and Lan would have been the ones sent to clean it.  Victoire had the feeling this was an opportunity.

She cut a silent path through empty rooms to the reading room just adjacent to the green parlor, and placed her ear near the corner where a window’s frame met the other wall.  It was the best spot to hear into the parlor.

“…don’t see the point.  She’ll just go back to using the gazebo or the east drawing room.”

“Well, when you’re the richest woman in the district, I guess you can decide where tea gets served.”

“Not if I have to murd–”

“ _Shhh_.  Are you out of your mind?”

“What?  It’s just you and me.”

A long pause.  Victoire leaned even harder against the corner.

“…just doesn’t make sense, though.  For three years they use separate bedrooms, he gets sick, makes a recovery, they suddenly rekindle the– the–  _romance_ –”

Giggling.

“And he just, bam, kicks it?”

“…It is strange.”

“You know it is.  Not to mention, I mean–” The maid’s voice lowered to a lurid hiss. “She, ‘wakes up’ and he’s just dead?”

“ _I know_.  I can’t imagine how…”

“It’s more convenient, isn’t it?  All of those friends of hers.  Having him out of the way, she can do as she pleases.”

“Right?  That Comtois man doesn’t look like he’s in a hurry to leave.”

“Still.  The baron wasn’t completely himself.  Not really recovered.”

“…Recovered enough, apparently.”

More giggling.

Victoire pushed away from the corner.  She padded across to the door, exited out into the hall.  In front of the green parlor’s door, she dropped her shoes to the floor noisily.  With deliberate care, she nudged them with her feet so that she could slip back into them as the parlor’s door swept open.  The two maids, wide-eyed, stared out at her.

Victoire glanced at them. “How strange.  I was just thinking of taking a stroll, and here my shoes have traipsed off without me.  Lucky thing I caught them.”

“Miss…”

“Quite lucky.  Who knows where they could have gotten to.”

She swiveled on her heel, feeling their eyes glued to her back as she walked away.

-

As a child, the adults would say: such a serious boy, he’ll make a good lord one day.  His father passed early, and his mother and grandmother ran the estate until he came into his majority.  He never attended university.  Never cared much for lessons.  He regretted that later.  The knowledge itself wasn’t hard to come by later.  But it took him more time to create connections, which his personality did not help.

But that’s not what he wanted for Alain, decades later.  That’s why he sent him to the best schools.  Sent him on a tour of all the nations after school.  Arranged a spectacular match for him.  For all the good it did.

Stupid boy.  Getting himself gutted on some scumbag’s blade.

He’d had him too late in life.  Things had become harder and harder to recover from.  He would dream of the sugared, bitter smell of unripened grapes and the hunched form of his grandmother on her horse.  Her black silhouette against the sun and the shadow of the vineyard’s lattices.  The way his father’s breath misted before his long beard during those rides.  His wife’s hands, un-young and showing slackness in the skin.

His first wife.  Alain’s mother.

He wondered sometimes, if he reached that other place and he met her there, what would she say?  What a good lord he’d made that day, when he lost Alain.

He’d been a good landlord, he’d known.  He’d protected the estates, all their wealth.  The heritage of his name.  His ancestors could blame him for nothing.  Except for leaving the line to die.

He’d tried.  But the years had slipped from him, and things had become harder and harder to recover from.

He had regrets, but it seemed inconsequential in the face of time.

The only thing, really, was her.  But the girl would be fine.  He was sure of it.

-

**Some Hours Afterward**

She slipped awake slowly, resisting all along the way.  It had become such a habit: curling around her sleep possessively until half the day was spent.  And better still, since she was usually free to fling her limbs in empty space, that he lingered for once.

Good.  If he had changed his mind, then he could at least afford this as well.

Eyes struggling, she exhaled and shifted.  Her head and hand rested on his chest.  A gap in the curtains behind her cast a long line of sunlight over the blanket.  Her fingers flexed, clenching and splaying across the fineness of his shirt.

She sat up, on instinct.  But her instinct, her mind, moved sluggishly and could not prod her body into urgency.

She stared.  The cold of his skin pulled at her, at her warmth.  Her own movements dizzied her, in relation to his stillness.  Her hand reached forward.

“My lord.”

She called for help.  Or she heard herself call for help.

The following days blurred.

-

**Years Afterward**

She slipped awake slowly, urging herself onward.  Her subconscious self.  Or part of it, or some form of it, or perhaps not that at all and it was just residual animal instinct that made her grasp for lucidity as if she were drowning and the undertow had its fangs in her.  Had she been dreaming within the form of a mermaid, fleeing the pursuit of some terror of the deep?  Something Victoire would say.

Her flesh abhorred cold.

“Are you awake?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Are you alright?  You were murmuring…”

She raised her fingers to her eyes, shifting her cheek on his chest.  It was very nearly overwarm, but she pressed closer.  Closer to the rhythm of his heart’s beat, the vibration transferred through touch.

“I’m sorry.  I know that’s your special purview.”

“Oh?”

“Talking my ear off even here.”

He combed through her loose curls, a steady counter-beat to the heart in her ear.  The sheer curtains about the bed filtered moonlight in the emeralds and indigos and purples of its elaborate pattern.  How much more rare and precious a gift– the trains and ribbons of the moon, when its appearance was so transient in comparison to the sun, and so stark when beset upon by the night’s darkness.  Heady scents of the sea filled the room.

“I don’t know if you want to hear it,” she finally said.

This was untrue.  She did know he would hear it, would want to hear anything that she needed to say.  But a warning seemed necessary, or at least a buffer for herself.

“Sabine,” Zarad said.

She sighed. “It’s Namaire.”

“Go on.”

“A few months before, he got sick.  But god knows if he was hiding pain or something before that.  After a few weeks of physicians and medicine and humors, it seemed he’d recovered.  And then.”

The immense murmur of the ocean mixed with the sound of their pulses.

“It’s not something I’ve ever told someone,” she said. “It’s not– I think he knew what was going to happen.  Somehow.  Not that there was intention, or anything.  I think he had a feeling.  You hear things like that, don’t you?  That people can feel it when the time’s… As if you start to waver here, and the oscillations sink to your bones.

“For years… we used separate rooms.  Lived largely separate lives.  But those last days, I think he needed an affirmation.   That he was living, that he existed.  So he… needed me… I guess.  It’s hard to think about.  To remember.  Because it seemed like he was drowning and nothing I could do would help him.”

She continued. “I thought…”

“You thought…?”

He sounded just as uncertain as her, just as much treading on a thin shear of ice.

“I don’t know.  He’d lived a full life long before we met.  I only knew him for four years.  Even if you know someone their whole life, you’ll never know everything.  I have no doubt I knew so very little.  But– those last days–”

She rolled over and covered her face.

“I’d wake up and feel like a completely different person in the light of day.  And then the nights swept in and the dark changed everything– I don’t know.  I felt that I knew him.  At least in those moments.  I was never in love with him.  But still.  It was amazing and frightening to see how fragile a person could be.”

He shifted, and she could feel him hovering with his fingers going to her hair again. “And that morning?”

She removed her hands. “As about as bad as you’d imagine… I’m glad you wake before me.”

“I’m not going to leave you, you know.”

“Good.  Despite what the rumors say, I don’t fancy making a career of this widow business.”

In the face of her poor attempt at a blithe tone, he pulled her close and told her he loved her.  And told her again.  Created a mantra of it, crooned her to sleep again to _I love you I love you._   Everything else was like those long ago nights; profound and ephemeral but ultimately not as dear and near and real as this.  She much preferred a sharper moon that saw her clearly and stayed with her in their travel across sleep’s dream-dark sky.


	13. 7kpp Week 2018: Heart (Sabine/Zarad)

Cordelia would never be so vulgar as to yawn, but it seemed Emmett and Clarmont were not above cracking their jaws against the winding down hours.  And even Cordelia looked a little slack around the cheeks, and she blinked rapidly, turning her lashes into fluttering butterflies struggling to prop her eyes open.

Clarmont threw his hand down on the card table with a rueful smile. “If I had any idea how quickly I would be bankrupted at the Summit, I might have stayed home.”

Cordelia let the gentlemen push her winning toward her with a small smile.  It wouldn’t do, after all, for a lady to scrabble and stretch across a table.

Beside her, Zarad pushed Sabine’s game chips over along with his own. “I am afraid we always sit at the card table with the princess to our doom.”

“She sure is–” Emmett started, interrupted by a tonsil-revealing yawn. “–the best here.  Sorry.”

Cordelia gave him a practiced and indulgent smile. “I hope you all have enjoyed yourselves.  I certainly have, but I am afraid I am quite tired.  I think I shall retire.”

“I think that is a good idea,” Clarmont said.  He stood to pull Cordelia’s chair.

“Oh, no!” Sabine protested.  She fluttered the fingers of one hand, a champagne flute in the other. “Oh, don’t go, loves!  I haven’t lost nearly enough yet!”

Cordelia, Clarmont, and Emmett smiled and made their apologies.  They left the parlor, leaving the dwindling little clusters of chatting delegates and the ever-deepening shadows.  It had become the habit of the more night- and company-inclined guests to linger together in the parlor for after-dinner drinks.  For the last few days Zarad and Sabine had run a cards table with rotating partners as their friend’s obligations changed.

Zarad leaned back to the little rolling cart with its ice bucket and pulled the champagne bottle out.  His silken robes slid a bit more open (shocking that such a thing was even possible!) and the low candlelight went gliding over his desert moon skin.  He caught her looking and gave her one of the smuggest smolders she’d witnessed yet.  She returned a very arch brow.

“Congratulations are in order,” he said, pouring the bottle’s last drops into his glass.

“Excuse me?  I know you are a little  _unique_ in the head, but you can’t have already forgotten that I am considerably lighter in the purse tonight.”

“Now, now,” he said. “You don’t have to be so modest with me.  You’ve succeeded in your greatest ambition, dear.  Quite an accomplishment!”

She sipped at her glass and didn’t dignify him with a comment.

Undeterred, he leaned forward with a smile and a wafter of spiced perfume. “You’ve finally gotten me alone, all to yourself.”

Sabine stared at him. “You know, you have gotten quite presumptuous of lately.  Assuming you know my mind before I do.  Quite ungentlemanly.”

“Gentleman?  I should hope I would never be called that.  I don’t know how well I could bear such an insult.  And the only thing I know is that I am helpless to stop the heights to which I bedazzle you.”

She placed her flute on the green felt of the card table and pulled some the discarded hands closer to them.

“I don’t believe that a bit,” she said, using a finger to flip some cards over, one by one. “In fact, I think– no, I know you have caught on to more than you show.  So show me.”

He gazed at her with quizzical smile. “Show you?”

“Tell me which card I am.”

And she flushed then– because his the muscles around his eyes relaxed that small bit that told her he was looking at her with the constant mask had lifted.  Lifted just enough for her to peek under– but it was enough.  Those peeks felt like being trapped together, nose to nose, beneath a veil.  She wouldn’t say it, but he was right.  He bedazzled her with his night eyes.

Zarad looked down at the cards, his crooked smile curling back up.  His fingers danced over the remains of their games.

“It depends,” he said, tone low, “Which version of you we’re speaking of.”

She tilted her head, long earrings swinging. “I have versions?”

“If it is the Red Baroness of Revaire we speak of–”

He pushed a card face-up toward her.  The queen of clubs, wielding her scepter in a threatening fist.  The queen of violence.  Of aggression, self-service.

Zarad’s fingers left the queen of clubs to pick up another card. “If it is the public Sabine, the baroness you present to society–”

Beside the queen of clubs, he laid down another.  The queen of diamonds.  The materialistic woman.  Wordly and unmindful of greater concerns.

He gazed at her as he selected and put down a third card. “But beneath even that–”

The queen of hearts.  The queen of love.  Love both romantic and platonic, and the people’s queen.

Sabine propped her chin on a hand; Cordelia would be horrified at such a casual and unladylike pose.  But she couldn’t help it.  He was so dangerous, because he made her want to drop each and every facade and game.  She smiled at him.

He gazed back for a long moment.  He blinked and dropped his eyes to the cards, surprising her.

She tapped the queen of hearts sitting by her two sisters. “And this is the true Sabine?”

He smiled and stared at it. “I wonder.”

Before the moment went too long and too close, Zarad’s hand reached for the cards again.  He plucked one up, brows back down into their flirty set and his eyes glittering.

“As for myself–” He laid his card down with a flourish. “The jack of hearts: the constant servant and devotee to his queen.”

The jack and queen of hearts stared up at them from the green felt.  They certainly looked a pair, with their matching red ink hearts and twining roses.

Sabine hummed. “Again, you are always so slippery.”

“Oh?”

“In some games the jack is the highest ranking, and in others it is the lowest.  Your jack plays at the lover, but he is a trickster.” She raised a brow at him; he smiled vaguely. “I believe it is my turn?”

She reached forward and shifted through the mess of cards.  When she found it, she glanced up and carefully laid it down before him.

The king of hearts.

They were two of the last delegates left in the parlor, and she could feel the eyes of the servants at the edges of the room.  She was afraid there was a particular pair of violet eyes boring a hole in her head, but at the moment nothing mattered more to her than the eyes in front of her.

The king hearts is unique of all the kings, not holding his weapon before him.  Rather, his hand held a sword aloft, stabbing backward and appearing to go straight through his skull.  The suicide king, he’s called.  The king of sacrifice, of ill-fated ends.

She watched him stare at the card, and she watched him command the muscles of his face into a smooth facade.  She summoned her own soft smile, as aware as he of the eyes in the room on them.

“I worry,” she near-whispered, “That the path you’re on is treacherous and unforgiving.  It is narrow– too narrow to allow you the comfort of your true thoughts and feelings.  That you kill the Zarad you deserve to be constantly.  Every day.”

She ran a finger up the side of the little paperboard card. “But you know, there is a different interpretation of the king of hearts; that he is not stabbing himself, but brandishing his sword high in victory.”

Her finger walked from the card across the table to his hand resting on the felt.  She slipped her fingers beneath his.  Their eyes met.

“That is the Zarad I see,” she said, voice so low it was little more than a silent mouthing.

His eyes roamed over her.  Then darted beyond her, and back again.  He smiled. “Then the situation is worse than I feared; you have become so bedazzled that you are quite seeing things.  It seems it is time for us to finally part– no, don’t cling, dear, we must be strong.”

She slipped her hand from his with a wry glare, just as Jasper materialized silently at her shoulder.

“My lady–”

“Yes, Jasper,” Sabine said, standing.  Zarad stood as well, and she eyed him. “I was just giving some wasted advice to this fool I found here.  But I had best be on my way now.”

Jasper gave a half-bow and stood aside waiting.  She gave one last raised brow to the usual sparkling smoulder in Zarad’s eye, and she dipped into the habitual curtsy before turning.

And she stopped.  Because she’d laid her hand on the back of the chair she’d been sitting in as she turned to sweep her skirts free of the card table and its ornate chairs, and on the hand she’d so thoughtlessly dropped to the back of chair now laid Zarad’s hand.  His fingers caught her pinky and ring finger, and they lightly squeezed before letting go.  When she looked up, his smile did not pull a bit out of place or his eyes register anything out of his usual nonsense.

She did not fare so well.  The suddenness had surprised her, and so her defenses were quite helpless against the strange intimacy of such a small thing.  Heat rose in her face.

Jasper cleared his throat.  She whipped around and walked from the parlor, a silly smile barely bit down about her lips.


	14. 7kpp Week 2018: Fear (Gen)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I can't leave my old OCs alone, and I bring back Jan Allard from An Anniversary. 83 Also, Sabine's fears as a Revairan.

As she “guided” them through the hedge maze, Sabine waited several little meaningless tête-à-tête exchanges about the merits of getting lost, the scandal of being suspected of running away with each other, etc., before she broached the topic she’d been keeping on the tip of her tongue since the welcome feast.

“I’ve been meaning to say– I believe we have a mutual friend,” she glanced up.

Clarmont smiled genially. “Oh?”

They did not move in the same circles.  The times they’d crossed paths at court could be counted on one hand.  Her glittering world of social seasons was quite apart from his sedate country life.  That they would have a mutual friend was indeed, worthy of an “Oh?”

Even an unsurprised one.

“Jan Allard.  The writer,” she smiled back. “He has the most interesting conversation, don’t you think?”

“Very much so.  Quite a character,” Clarmont said. “I must confess, though.  His treatises are a bit beyond me.”

She laughed lightly. “They certainly are for me.  But somehow I think you are being a little modest, my lord.”

“Oh, no.  I am afraid I am hopeless beyond the small matters of a country estate.  High econcomics and such send me off snoozing in my armchair.  And I suspect, my lady, that it is you who is being modest.”

“Modest?  Me?  How scandalous.”

He laughed low in his throat.

“But that does remind me,” he said. “When I saw Jan last, he told me to send you his regards.”

Sabine’s light hand on his arm directed them down yet another dead end.  They turned about, and a warm breeze brushed the back of their necks.  She remained silent for a moment.

“That was kind of him,” she said.  She stared ahead. “I have not seen him in some time, and did not get the chance to give my farewells.  You would have seen him… last month, yes?  I believe he was staying with you.”

Clarmont said nothing for a long stretch.

Like every month, last month had been awfully quiet on his estate, save for his guest.  It had not been so quiet in the capital, however.  Oh, not for the nobility, of course.  The court’s favored, anyway.  The parties and luncheons and theatricals continued on.  But in the city’s lower streets, the common people’s squares ran red.  A new batch of anarchists and radicals had been rounded up by the Crown, and dealt with.  Including that nuisance of an anti-monarchist pamphlet writer, The Fox.  The Fox had swung, along with his fellow instigators, from the gallows before a sullen-eyed crowd.

There was a secret that the Crown hadn’t sniffed out, though.  The Fox was not the man they caught, but rather Jan Allard.

Which he knew she knew.  And which she knew he knew she knew.  And so on, and so forth.

Clarmont smiled. “Yes.  I kept him for as long as I could, but I’m afraid he was more than pleased to finally escape the dullness of my land for his usual haunts.”

Sabine smiled. “Oh, I doubt very much that is true–”

They continued on their stroll through the idyllic gardens until teatime.

-

“There’s been a change,” Sayra said quietly.  She stood to the side with the corset in her hands and the laces draped over the shoulder of her neat black jacket.

Sabine had her arms halfway raised to let her begin help dressing her.  She turned her head over her shoulder to Sayra.

“A change?”

Sayra pulled the corset over her shift, and Sabine held it against her breast as she began to lace the back.

Sayra lowered her voice. “Lady Pema is planning on visiting Princess Gisette before Lady Naomi’s morning tea.  The princess plans to pressure her into taking her along to the tea.”

A presumptuous move by the princess– to intrude uninvited– but people were often left with no other options with her than ‘Yes’ or ‘Yes.’  That Sayra should know such intimate information was becoming less of a surprise as the days went by.

Sabine gazed across the room and let Sayra work, threading the dozens of eyelets with a practiced ease.  Ria had left already after finishing her hair and makeup, and Jasper would be at the door soon.  She felt all her lumps settling into a comfortable and familiar position as Sayra tied off the corset’s laces.

“Could you get the pink day dress instead?” Sabine said. “I think I will send my regrets to Lady Naomi.  I’ve a bit of a headache coming on.”

Sayra did not pause as she silently went to the wardrobe to put back the visiting gown and all of its accompanying underthings.

As they pulled pink dress’s matching petticoat carefully over her head, so as not to disturb her hair, Sabine caught her dark eyes.

“Thank you, dear.”

Sayra blinked placidly and tied off one side of the petticoat. “Not at all, my lady.”

-

The stablehand patted Butterscotch’s wide flank.  The horse’s tail barely flicked.  He was, truthfully, only a step above a plow horse in temperament.  But the Lady Sabine of Revaire had been requesting the most docile and slowest beast they could find ever since her accident, and so Butterscotch was pulled from his quiet life of grazing placidly on the rare occasion that she was invited to a ride.  She accepted these invitations with some reluctance, it seemed.

The stablehand took a cloth handed to him by the boy assigned to follow him about on duty as part of training.  The boy took his own cloth and began helping him wiping down Butterscotch’s broad sides.

The Isle stables were beautiful.  Straight-cut beams lofted high, and groundskeepers kept the white mortar of the walls neat and clean.  Broad strokes of sunlight painted the smooth rock floor, let in by the tall windows set with real glass.  These horses lived better than many humans, truthfully.

Over the perfume of new hay being laid down and the chatter of the others working, the stablehand and the boy groomed Butterscotch.

A flurry of something drew his eye to a window.  He dusted the front of his breeches and went to the glass.  The stablehand blinked, his cheeks shifting.

He gestured to the boy to continue working on Butterscotch as he slipped out the stables’ grand double doors.

The area around the stables was of course manicured and arrayed to suit the aesthetic sensibilities of the nobility; pretty trees and intricate little awnings provided shade over several seating areas.

A lady and lord stood by one of these very seating areas and its ornamental topiary.  Their body language and distant sound of chatter read as light and friendly, even if the lord leaned in a rather looming-way and held his shoulders and nose rather high.  You’d think they were indeed just chatting, but you could never know with this lot.  Especially with that crown prince of Revaire and the very lady of Revaire whose horse he’d been currying.

She’d apparently lingered after her ride in order to rest– riding being a practice in containing reluctance for her– and Prince Jarrod had happened by.

Unseen, the stablehand watched a moment.  He grabbed a large broom and rounded the corner of the stables toward the gentil paved yard.  He pushed the stiff bristles against the pale stone tiles and whistled a jaunty tune.  He felt them take notice and dipped his hat respectfully.  The prince frowned and the lady blinked.  The stablehand replaced his hat and continued, whistling ever louder.

He saw out of the corner of his eye as the prince turned back, his cocky posture and whatever his line of cocky words had been interrupted and not so much in stride.  The lady straightened and said something.  The prince retorted.  A short exchange followed.  The prince finally turned with an overly-dramatic swirl of his cape and stalked away.  A bit of red marked his pale cheeks.

The stablehand continued sweeping.  A pair of trim boots and the embroidered hem of a riding habit swished into his view.

He bowed slightly. “My lady.”

Lady Sabine ran a hand over her skirts as she gazed at him. “I owe you my thanks.”

“My lady?” he said.

She raised a dark brow.

He tapped the ground with the broom. “Just doing my job, my lady.”

“Then you have fortuitous timing,” she said.

She tilted her head back to study him.  Her brow knitted. “You…”

The stablehand waited with a vague smile.

“It would be good…” Lady Sabine started. “I mean, I would very much appreciate it if this incident remained here.  And did not reach the ears of our friend.”

He considered this.  He was no player of the guests’ rotten games, but there was no mistaking who she meant.  Their mutual companion at the servants’ gambling tables.  Her eyes were stuck to his expression with uncertainty pinching her lips.

“I can do that, my lady,” the stablehand said. “But, pardon the presumption– not much of a way to have a beginning.  With un-truths.”

Her eyes widened.  And then her shoulders went sort of limp as she huffed a small laugh. “I suppose you are right– well, you are very right actually.” She popped open a fan to shield her face from the sun as she smiled. “I owe you my thanks twice it seems.”

“Not at all, my lady.”

The fan’s shadow cast her features into a sort of soft painterly picture.  She peered at him.  Looking for something, seemed like.

“It’s just…” she said. “Well.  It’s a bit embarrassing, I have to admit.”

He shrugged.  Studied her back. “I didn’t see anything embarrassing.  I mean.  Pardon me, but the prince is… something, right?”

Her eyes shifted, and she lowered her voice. “Well.  Yes.  But I am fortunate, aren’t I?  Unlike others.”

The quiet of her voice echoed the quiet steps and quiet looks of laundry girls, maids.  He nodded.

“We all have our own ways, my lady,” he said.

They paused quietly.  No one was about; most of the stable workers were inside tending to the steeds of the nobility after their morning rides.  If anyone would pass by, they might look strange.  The lady met his eyes, and their words turned into a silent acknowledgement.  She stepped back.

She sighed. “Well, I must be away.  Until next time, dear.”

“My lady.”

She walked away, and the stablehand went back to Butterscotch.


	15. 7kpp Week 2018: Family (Gen)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set shortly after Namaire's death, Sabine returns home for a visit.

Sabine took the hand Chrétien offered, and a few raindrops fell on her traveling gloves.  Black spots bloomed over the maroon silk.  She stepped down from the carriage, careful with her impractical and yet very pretty slippers on the slick running board.  The butler– the new one that Chrétien had written to her about– held an umbrella to shield her mostly, and her brother partly, from the rain.

“Thank you,” Sabine told him.

“Of course, madam,” he said, specks of water dotting his coarse dark hair.  He managed a bow that was both elegant in its grace and careful in its keeping the umbrella still keeping the rain off.

It could never be said the facade of the Guyenne estate did not show a modern style– attractive in its stately proportions with larger windows than the ancestors had used and more delicate crenelations– but that was the face of the castle.  The interiors and the unseen sections told a different story.  The southern wing jutted out over a lake and would have lovely vistas if the whole wing did not smell of mildew and the foundation had not been steadily dissolving into that very same lake.

Only half the eastern wing was kept open, and many of the western wing’s room were also kept closed.  The best and oldest portraits were kept covered year-round unless company was expected.  Servants were constantly hired and dismissed as the cash flow changed, so new faces were a permanent feature of the house.

“Shall we?” Chrétien asked.

It never failed to surprise her: having to look up at him.  Even though he’d been taller than her for years.  Curly dark hair and dimples, her precious baby brother.  He smiled inquisitively at her lingering.

Sabine patted his arm. “Very well.”

They walked the short distance over the shining gravel to the entrance, Manel and his umbrella following.  The footmen were waiting with the entrance doors.  Rain darkened the shoulders of their wool uniforms.  They bowed as she and Chrétien passed.

Warmth washed over them in the foyer.  White and pink marble, silver sconces and gold gilding.  She had a minimum of time to inspect the latest refurbishment before a side door burst open and screaming bounced about the foyer.

Two bundles of taffeta and ribbon bows bowled into her midriff.

“Sabine!  Sabine!”

Sabine laughed and stooped to grip the two girls strangling her waist even tighter to herself.   They squealed.  She knelt to push them back a little and get a better look.  Identical brown and dimpled cheeks, cheekbones that would one day be sculpted, little bow mouths.  Camilla wore a yellow frock with yellow lace, and Marigold wore blue with black velvet ribbons.  They grinned at her.

“Oh my doves,” Sabine said. “Little dumplings.  You’ve grown so much!”

“Did you bring  _Pardot’s Theorems_ –”

“What about  _The Principles of Thought as_ –”

“Girls,” Chrétien said.  He handed his coat off to the doorman and frowned at them. “She’s been in the door for a second.  You could at least give a proper greeting.”

Sabine stifled a snort.  His babyface made the frown look very ill-fitting indeed.  She tugged on the twins’ mahogany curls.

“He’s right.  I  _could_ be convinced by a kiss though,” she whispered.

They giggled, and together pecked either side of her face. “Hello, sister!”

“Hello, loves!  The books are in my luggage, and I’m sure the maids are already unpacking–”

They flew up the main staircase before she finished the thought.

“Camilla, Marigold!”

Vera appeared in the same archway they’d come screaming from, herself much more sedate in a great voluminous skirt of a saccharine pink.  Her thin and brown shoulders nearly drowned in embellishments, and her head swayed under the great whirl of her dark curls molded into a complicated style.  She smoothed down delicate rosettes and ruffles to smile at Sabine.  Lilah followed her into the foyer as well.

“Sabine,” Vera said after a pause, her arms jerking upward for an embrace.

“Vera,” she said and pulled her as close as possible with that large skirt.  Their jaws clacked together in the cheek kisses.  Sabine held her shoulders and smiled as she inspected her. “My.  Aren’t you a picture.  Perfectly pretty, dear.”

Vera inspected her as well, again pausing a little too long. “And you look– well.  Quite appropriate.  Quite appropriate, sister.”

Sabine smiled.  The traveling gown was red for mourning.  The seamstress had cut it well-fitted and styled it modernly.  Not too ostentatious to be worthy of second looks, but certainly not dowdy.  Quite appropriate indeed.  Yet Vera’s eyes lingered on the close cut of the dress and her figure beneath it.  When gathered together, Sabine quite always stood apart from the other Guyenne women in not being quite so narrow and svelte.  Not at all, in fact.

And Vera let slip the word ‘appropriate’ in that condescending manner that was ever her particular charm.  Yes.  There certainly was no place like home.

“Lilah,” Sabine said, looking beyond Vera’s shoulder.

Lilah stepped forward in a motion not quite a curtsy and yet still somehow deferential.  As she dipped, her hand swept smooth the front of her simple dress.  Rather too simple, really, in Sabine’s opinion.  A schoolgirl’s crown of braids wrapped around her head and pulled taut at her temples, making her hooded and heavy-lashed eyes rather doll-like.

“Sister,” Lilah said.

Sabine raised a brow. “‘Sister’?  Why, what manners!  What a perfect little lady– oh don’t, I know quite well you’re all growing up, but if you think I’m going to let you get by without a hug you are sorely mistaken.”

She held out her hands and gestured imperiously.  Lilah’s lips cracked a little smile despite herself.  They hugged, a little awkwardly having been several months out of practice.  And she was turning out to be such a formal little thing, her Lilah.

“Oh, look at my beauty, my love–”

Behind Vera appeared Mother and Father.  Lilah released her as Mother bull-rushed them and scooped Sabine into a fiercely tight embrace.  And then Father threw his arms about the both of them and squeezed them until they squealed.  A great deal of fussing and admiring was had, with complaints about the journey and the eye-rolling about Camilla and Marigold.  Sabine protested the absence of the littlest of her siblings (Andreas, Domin, and baby Marjot); Chrétien smiled and pointed out that it was well past dark and their bedtimes.

When this quieted, and her mother stopped making dewey eyes at the sight of her in full mourning, Sabine looked about the hall where they– still– lingered.

“Where is Rosalin?” she asked.

Mother and Father quieted.  Lilah and Vera’s eyes flew to their faces.  Lady Guyenne, beautiful as ever with an artful tumble of dark curls and a thin face and large thick-lashed eyes, stared at Sabine with her lips mouthing around floundering words.  She looked to her husband.  Lord Guyenne, mahogany to his wife’s copper with his coarse hair flaring from his head in a handsome halo, tugged at the lapels of his coat and hesitantly smiled at Sabine.

“Well.  Dear–”

“Where,” Sabine said, her tone changing. “Is Roselin?”

Lord Guyenne’s lips puckered.  When their parents still remained silent, Sabine’s gaze shot to Chrétien.  His dark brows shot up.  He raised his hands defensively.

“I’ve just gotten back with you.  I know as much as you do.”

She turned back on her parents.  They managed placating smiles.

“Sabine, darling–”

She exhaled violently. “No, do not– I cannot believe the pair of you!  This is the  _third_ time.”

Mother sighed and laughed. “Oh, Sabine, really.  It’s not such an ordeal.  You know Rosalin!  She can’t be caged, she’s a free spirit–”

“She is a  _young girl_ ,” Sabine shot back. “She is a foolish and arrogant young girl you have coddled into thinking that she is impervious to consequence–”

This tirade and back and forth continued on for a while.  Vera and Lilah drifted as close as Vera’s ridiculous skirts allowed, with mirroring awkward nonplussed expressions.  Chrétien’s hands hovered about and reached forward as if to make some gesture of intervention, but he never expressed anything other than silent dismay in his wide eyes.

Mother fluttered her hands. “Oh, enough!  She’s fine–”

“Really?  Really, she’s  _fine_?  Do you even have any idea where’s she gone this time?”

“She has a poetic heart!  Romance is in her blood, and I’m glad–”

“So that’s what this is?  Another love drama?”

“Sabine,” Father said.  He placed a hand on her arm and smiled at her pleadingly. “Please.  Rosalin is an intelligent girl.  She’ll be fine.”

She stared up at him, clenching her jaw. “How long has she been gone?”

He hesitated. “Ah.  A… few days.”

Sabine closed her eyes.  She released a long stream of extremely cross breath. 

“Sabine,” Chrétien said.  He looked at her with beseeching eyes and dimples.  He has always hated conflict.

She exhaled and pursed her lips. “Alright, fine.  Vera, Lilah– I think it’s time you two went to bed.”

Vera made a sound of protest, her mouth opening in an angry ‘o.’  Lilah discretely nudged her in the side before pulling on some sash or enormous silk rose on her skirt.  Vera made a bit of a squawk as she was led up the stairs.

“You two,” she gestured at her parents. “Continue on, I suppose.”

Mother blinked. “Wh– Won’t you come sit down for a nightcap?”

Sabine shook her head, already walking past them. “No.  Good night, Mother, Father.  I will see you at breakfast.”

She moved past the grand staircase to the oaken door tucked behind it.  A pair of ‘Good night’s!’ and Chrétien’s footsteps trailed after her into the warm and dimly lit hallway that meandered around the parlors, the library, and the sitting rooms.  A slightly threadbare carpet kept their steps muffled, and the inset panelling kept the damp and cold air from the rain out.  It was late enough that they didn’t encounter servants.

“Sabine,” Chrétien said.

“I have a feeling.  She knew I was coming, didn’t she?”

“Yes.”

They found their way to the kitchens.  The broad and tall-ceilinged room was lined with worn wooden counters, beautiful hammered copper pots with dark patina, little terracotta pots with herbs, and dried ham hocks.  The scent of salt and yeast and rendered fat perfumed the air.  At one of the thick-planked tables set around for food prep, a cluster of servants sat over cups of tea.  Brows raised, they stood as Sabine and Chrétien entered.

“My lord, my lady–”

“Hello, Cook,” Chrétien smiled. “This is Sabine.  The oldest of our little brood.”

The older woman– suspiciously thin for a cook, but appropriately cheerful in the smile– bobbed a bit.  Another new face hired on since she’d left.

“Oh, yes, of course.  We’ve heard so much, my lady.”

Sabine smiled back, stuffing down her agitation. “Some of it good, I hope.  Please– don’t stand on my account.  And I have to ask your forgiveness for intruding on your domain.”

“Oh, not at all.”

Sabine gestured and the cook and the two kitchenhands hovered in an almost-sitting position.  They hesitated, looking at each other.  Chrétien smiled encouragingly, and Sabine moved past the butcher’s block and the counters to another of the clean, lemon-scented tables.  She sat, her red skirts rustling loudly, and the servants slowly sat as well.

But the cook popped up again. “Shall I make you tea?”

Chrétien sat beside Sabine, and waved his hands. “No, no, we’re fine.  Please, don’t worry on our account.”

“Yes,” Sabine said. “We’re sorry for imposing–  Ah, my manners.  What was your name?”

“Nadia, ma’am.  But ‘Cook’ is fine.”

“Nadia.  We’re sorry for imposing.  But we’ve a little mouse we’re hunting.”

Nadia blanched.

Sabine stopped short and smiled. “Oh, no.  Don’t worry.  Not a real mouse.  I’m only joking.”

Pausing a moment, she smiled back and chuckled. “Oh, well.  Just so you know, ma’am, I keep a tight ship down here and you’ll find no vermin here.”  She wagged a stern finger.

“A woman after my own heart,” Sabine said.

They all sat like that for a while.  The servants at one table them at another.  Despite their assurances, the conversation between the cook and her girls went stilted and too quiet.  Sabine and Chrétien sat silently, smiling placatingly at their inquisitive looks.  Rather quickly, Cook and the girls left for their quarters.

The candles in the sconces and hanging lanterns flickered as the time dragged.  Sabine let the stillness of the kitchen cool her off, and Chrétien made some comments about the skill of the new cook.  He yawned a few times but shook his head when she told him to go on to bed.

But in fact, they didn’t have to wait that long.  The door to the kitchen yard, around the corner from where they sat, squealed as it cautiously pushed inward.  A long pause.  The hard patter of rain and the blue light of the moon spilled into the kitchen.  The door creaked as it closed.  The tap of well-heeled boots bounced off the walls.

Rosalin rounded the corner, freezing at the sight of her two older siblings sitting in the kitchens.

“Hello, Rosalin,” Sabine said. “Nice of you to join us.”

Her lips flapped open and closed for a moment.  She was soaking wet.  Her black hair was plastered to her skull, her ponytail a tangled mess.  Her jaunty scarlet coat drooped splotchy and dripping from her thin shoulders, and her matching red breeches clung to her legs.  Her black boots shone with rain.

“Uh,” Rosalin struggled. “Uh.  I, uh.  Thought you were coming tomorrow.”

Sabine raised a brow. “That’s the thing about carousing rakes.  They tend to lose track of time.”

Rosalin frowned. “I wasn’t– You have no idea–” She rounded on Chrétien with a glare. “You!”

He threw his hands up. “I was gone, remember?  I was with her, and had no notion at all about this.  And anyway, why does everyone blame me for these things?”

“Oh!” Rosalin huffed. “You’re always on her side anyway!”

Sabine stood. “There are no sides, Rosalin.  There’s only our family.  And don’t talk to your brother like that.”

She rolled her thick-lashed eyes. “So what?  Is this the part where you give me the lecture?”

Sabine eyed her.  She shook her head. “You’re drenched.  Go change and get to bed.”

“Sabine, you’re not my mother.  You can’t tell me what to do.”

“You’re right, I’m not your mother,” Sabine said. “But I do happen to be the one paying for your dancing lessons.  Your singing and fencing masters.  I happen to be the one that has paid bribes to alehouses and casinos to forget your face.  I am the one who paid for that very suit you wear and the food on your table, Rosalin– so.  Go upstairs.   _And go to bed_.”

Rosalin glared.  They gazed at each other.  Exhaling angrily, Rosalin walked away with an indignant clip in her step.

Sabine deflated when the kitchen doors banged shut behind her.  She closed her eyes, the journey catching up with her.

“Welcome home…?” Chrétien said.

She stared at him, and shook her head. “I don’t know why I bother.”

-

A certain Boneille Guyenne had commissioned the desk nearly a century ago, insistent that it be as impressive as possible.  Her interpretation of “impressive” honestly left much to be desired aesthetically.  It loomed in the middle of the library, nearly the size of a draft horse, with its fluted columns for legs and its crenellation of roses and little birds.  Sabine leaned over its inlaid cherry wood surface.  A black ledger laid out before her.  The fingers of her red gloved hand perused the pages and columns.

Mid-morning light, lavender from last night’s rain, danced over the parquet, the tall shelves, and the leather chairs.

Chrétien stepped through the open archway. “Ah.  The audit’s begun already.”

Sabine straightened and smiled wryly at him. “Trust me.  It’s light reading.  I have absolutely nothing to worry about and you’ve done very well.”

He approached, his hand coming up to rub at his neck bashfully.  He looked down at the ledger with her.  “Really, please check to see if everything matches what I’ve sent you.”

She sat down at the desk’s overplush chair, smoothing out the draping of her red skirts. “Chrétien.  I’m proud of you.”

“Just make sure you really do look through everything.  I’m sure…”

“Did you hear me?” she gazed at him, still avoiding her eyes. “I said I’m proud of you.”

His dimples deepened with his embarrassed smile.  He reluctantly met her eyes and shook his head. “You’ve done all the hard work.”

Sabine gave an exasperated sigh.  She smiled at him, and flipped the ledge shut.  He sat at the edge of the ostentatious desk, trying to keep a little opal gilded lion from digging into his back.

“Any sign of Rosalin?” Sabine said.

“She generally never wakes up before noon.”

Her lips pinched. “Well.  I’m having a talk with her at some point during this visit whether she likes it or not.” Her eyes snapped to him. “Actually.  I need a talk with you as well.”

“Me?  What did I do?”

“Oh, nothing, honey.  Not that sort of talk.  Unless I need to know something?”

“No, no!”

She laughed. “You’re so cute.”

“I–” he started, dark and thick brows knit perplexedly. “What did you want to talk about?”

Sabine inspected him.  The tall and thin windows looked out over the south grounds and its articulated “natural” paths and little copses.  It was easier and cheaper to maintain a naturalistic garden than a formal one.  Chrétien leaned toward the tall side, with limbs that were gradually coming into their own with a graceful way of drawing him up politely.  He dressed well, yet simply, and his pleasant looks invited instant trust.  No one could mistake him for anything other than a noble son.

“You’re going to university,” Sabine said. “No matter what.”

He gazed at her, and his lips pulled a bit tight. “Sabine… I…”

“I know you think that staying here and keeping up with the estate will be the best,” she went on. “But you going and furthering your education, spending time in society and learning more– that is what will help this family most, Chrétien.”

“I just.  I worry about what will happen here if I’m gone.  I was visiting you for not even a fortnight and Rosalin ran off with us knowing.”

“Rosalin is another matter.  Completely unrelated.” She reached across the desk and laid a hand on his fingers. “I want you to be selfish in this.  I know you want to go; your books and theorems are always on your mind, I know it.  There will be plenty of time to rebuild the family name and all of that later.  But now is the time for you to serve yourself.”

He remained silent.  She squeezed his fingers.

“I want you to go out, meet bad influences.  Make mistakes.  Have fun.  You deserve it, you know.”

“Bad influences?” he smiled.

She frowned. “Well.  Not too bad.  I shall certainly have stern words if you get too wild.”

He smiled a moment longer before looking down and rubbing his fingers on the desk’s surface.

“I… think I do want that.  To, uhm, go.”

She stood and went around to him, pulling him into a hug.  Seated, he actually was at eye level with her.

“I know you do,” she said. “You’re my baby brother.  Of course I know.  And go you shall!”

He patted her back. “Please don’t start on the baby brother stuff.”

“My sweetie!  My itty bitty wuvie-dovie  _baby_ –”

“Stop!  You’re bullying me, stop!”

Sabine laughed and released him.  She leaned against the desk beside him.  Their shoulders knocked.  It reminded her of them being small and sitting on a kitchen bench together, squeezed in with the others.  Staying warm in one of the remaining rooms to be heated, during one of the more lean times.

“I wanted your thoughts on some other things,” she said.

“Oh?”

She nodded. “I think it’s time to look to the future.”

A maid passed by in the hall outside the entrance, weighed down with a basket of laundry.  Rosalin’s red suit dangled from the edge.  The laundresses would have a time of it restoring the red wool after the drenching it got yesterday.

“You are going to university,” Sabine stated. “Afterwards, we’ll see, but I’m sure you’ll have options and ideas for after.  Rosalin– let’s put her aside for the moment.  She is her own tangle of problems.  Vera…” She tapped on the desk with her fingers. “What do you think of marriage for her?”

Chrétien’s brow rose. “She’s… too young still, don’t you think?”

“I don’t mean right away.  A few more years.  But I think not too long, because I highly doubt that she will ever mature much more.  I think the best thing is to find someone patient and indulgent, and of good enough position to flatter her vanity–”

“And enough money to afford it.”

“Yes.  Someone safe and not caught up in politics or the court.  Because she simply is unsuited to those matters.  But, eventually.  I think that would be best for her.”

He nodded slowly. “You’re probably right.”

“I’ll speak to her about it,” Sabine pushed on. “Now, Lilah.  Lilah– I would rather push off her marriage for as long as possible.  I see potential in her for political power, and I don’t believe she’d ever be satisfied with a safe marriage.”

“Are you thinking… the Summit?”

“She won’t be old enough for the next one.  But maybe the one after.  Or…” She paused. “I have some ideas for myself, and if she were willing she could be a great help to me.  She has intelligence, poise, looks…”

“But– I’m not sure what she wants.”

“Me either.  Another conversation to have.  If I can draw her out– you know how difficult she can be.”

“Yes.  But there’s time.”

Sabine nodded. “Now, the twins.  I think it’s obvious for them.  When they’re fifteen or sixteen, I think we’ll send them along to one of Jiyel’s academies.  They’ll thrive there, I’m sure.”

Chrétien smiled. “They’ve already talked about that, you know.”

“Have they?  Well, it’s settled then.  I’ll look into the different schools.  Or just ask them, because I am sure they know everything already.  And have opinions.”

“So then, the children?”

She smiled. “You’re all children to me, love.”

“You know, you’re not that much older than me.”

“My baby brother.  Adorable little dimpled babycakes.”

He grimaced nervously. “Please don’t.  Domin?  Andreas?”

Her expression faded back to seriousness. “Honestly, I’d like to have them fostered elsewhere.  Preferably together.  Wellin or Arland.  Somewhere staid.”

Chrétien hesitated. “But, they’re so young.”

“I know.  I don’t say this lightly.  Maybe in a few years, but…” She shook her head, and she sighed. “And Marjot…”

Marjot had only been born the previous year.  She was happy little bundle of gurlges and squirming, but she truly was just a baby.

“A baby truly should have her mother,” Sabine said. “But… I don’t know, Chrétien.  I’m nervous about waiting too long.”

Somewhere deeper in the house, Camilla and Marigold and the two young boys were shrieking about something.  Overhead, running feet pounded across the upper floor.

Sabine lowered her voice and leaned in closer to him. “You don’t know quite how bad it is in the capital, Chrétien.  The stories alone don’t do it justice.  Everything is beautiful and jeweled and gilded, and the ballrooms are full of laughter– but there is suspicion everywhere.  Blood being spilt in the dark, away from the public’s sight but always on their minds.”

She swept a red-gloved hand over her red skirts.  Chrétien reached over to lay an arm over her shoulders.  They leaned into each other.

“Mother and Father…”

“You know how I feel about them.”

He nodded, and went silent.  They sat together– the two of them, the two oldest and therefore tied together as the responsible ones.  They had always been partners in everything, and knew better than anyone what they each carried.

-

After a day or two of chasing rumours of Rosalin stalking the halls, taking her meals in strange places, and making a nuisance of herself in the servant’s quarters– Sabine finally hunted her down in one of the closed off wings of the estate.  If ever renovated, the long gallery would be beautiful with its very old and very tall (and very boarded up) windows and its covered antique settees and enormous pink marble fireplace.

Rosalin prowled around the room, wearing white breeches and a blue fencing jacket with its tails whipping behind her.  She moved about with one arm tucked into her back and the other thrusting and slashing with her rapier.  She hummed an arpeggio as she fought an invisible opponent, dust dancing in her wake.

In the doorway, Sabine cleared her throat.

Rosalin paused.  Her expression fell at the sight of her.  She’d somehow pulled the boards away from one window, and its light caught along the wavering edge of her suspended blade.  Sabine stepped forward.

Rosalin lowered her sword arm. “Do you want something?”

Sabine gave her a look. “Could you please try to sound more displeased to see me?  If that is even possible?”

Rosalin’s mouth twisted around and she shrugged.

Picking up her skirts so the pretty embroidered hem didn’t drag in patches of dust, Sabine gingerly minced forward to a couch shrouded in a white cloth.  She grimaced at the layer of powder and fuzz on the cloth and jerked at it until she could toss it to the side.  At the cloud this disturbed, she coughed and waved in front of her face.  The upholstery of the couch was ratty and badly in need of replacement.

Still, Sabine sat with as much grace as if it were the finest silk.  She eyed Rosalin, but she remained stuck to her spot with her feet placed for some fencing maneuver.  As if waiting for her to live so she could restart.

“You can remain standing if you like,” Sabine said. “But I’m going to speak to you anyway.”

They stared at each other for a bit before Sabine exhaled.

“Rosalin, I hope you do realize that I don’t treat you the way I do to anger you.  I love you, and I get concerned.”

Rosalin’s eyes went wary. “I’m not a child.  I can take care of myself.”

Sabine sighed. “I know.  You’re not a child, but neither are you completely grown.  You realize that, don’t you?  The places you go, the things you do… They’re more dangerous than I think you know.”

“I’m not afraid of danger,” she retorted, eyes flashing. “Especially when it’s in the service of what’s right.  When it’s a strike back at the boot on the throats of the innocent and downtrodden.”

“And you think you’re actually helping people?  Helping your great cause and not simply invited scrutiny?  Scrutiny that could very well mean not just your neck but all of ours?  That you aren’t, in fact, simply playing revolutionary?”

Her dark brows drew in anger. “I’m careful.  I’m always careful.  But I can’t believe it– I knew you were such an overbearing sham, but I can’t believe you’re an actually cold-blooded  _monarchist_.”

She spat the word,  _monarchist_ , venomously.

“I am– publicly,” Sabine stated calmly. “As so many of us must be.  You would be surprised how many of the people you spit at for being bootlickers actually harbor no good will for the current Crown.”

Rosalin sniffed. “No action is as bad as support.”

“Who said I’m not acting?” Sabine said.  They stared at each other.  Sabine remained straight-backed with a direct gaze while uncertainty seeped into Rosalin’s eyes.

Sabine continued. “But that is the difference.  Do you know the type of people that crowd the gallows stage and swing on the ropes?  Those without caution.  That move without subtlety.  And their loved ones and friends swing with them.  You know this.  You’ve seen it.”

Oh, yes.  She did indeed know about all of Rosalin’s little excursions into the cities and their lower quarters.

Rosalin fully lowered her rapier and brought her feet together.  She looked away, bit her lip.

Sabine leaned back. “But you’re right.  You’re no longer a child.  So I’ll let you know that I’ve talking with Chrétien about all of you.  About your futures.  Because Mother and Father certainly aren’t thinking about it.  But when it comes to you, I worry.”

Rosalin sat on the couch with her, quite a few seats away and not looking at her.

“Women have few choices, Rosalin,” Sabine said. “A true marriage isn’t possible for you.  But– if we discuss our options– certain arrangements can be made in a marriage.”

Her eyes shot up at this. “I don’t want that.  Ever.  Love should be true and honest and gone into with everything you are.”

“I was talking of marriage.  Not love.”

“I won’t separate the two.”

Sabine studied her.  Truthfully, she could not blame her.  She was grateful to Namaire, and had loved him in a way– but she’d never been in love with him.

“Maybe there is something in our blood,” Sabine said. “Because now I am very little inclined to disagree with you.  In the future, I…” She trailed off, and she shook her head. “Who knows what the future holds?  But for now, I am not going to force you into anything you don’t want.”

She scoffed. “I’d like to see you try.” But the sullen edge was gone and a more genial, sarcastic sharpness took its place.

Sabine glanced at her with a small smile. “Well, then, what do  _you_ think your future will look like?  Because I am struggling to see anything more than corrupting young ladies and winning duels.”

“That sounds pretty good to me,” Rosalin said. “What’s so wrong with that?”

“That’s all very well and good in your youth, but you’ll have to settle down at some point.”

“I don’t see why.”

Sabine gave her a look.  Rosalin pursed her lips and shrugged.

“Look.  I can take care of myself, Sabine.  I know– I guess– that you want to help, but I’m never going to be alright with ‘quiet’ and ‘respectable.’”

“Who said anything about  _respectable_?  A good rumour or three can be quite useful.  I’m more concerned about  _safe_.”

“I said I was careful, didn’t I?  And… I’ll try to be more careful.  Your subtle thing.  I’ll try.”

Staring hard at her, Sabine exhaled. “I’d prefer to see it rather than just hear it from you.  But alright.  And no more running off!  If you want to go in to the city, you need only ask.  You’re old enough now that you can pretend to be accompanying one of our friends.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Rosalin said, in an entirely unconvincing tone.  She changed tactics. “You said you were thinking about the future for all of us?”

She was the third oldest.  Sabine was used to relying only on Chrétien concerning family matters, and she was used to expected the worst of Rosalin’s temperament– but perhaps she was mistaken about that now.  She was the third oldest and therefore some of the responsibilities could be imparted to her.  Or at least discussed if only to open her eyes to the realities the rest of them were in.

Sabine spoke to her about her tentative plans for each of their siblings, and Rosalin commented here and there.  She still seemed wary, as if there was some trap in Sabine’s new candor.

“You seem… oddly concerned about getting us out of Revaire.”

Rosalin now sat facing her on the couch, one soft boot on the floor and the other tucked up underneath her thigh.  The singular uncovered window’s light gilded her dark ponytail and her strong brows, her high cheekbones and proud nose.  She studied Sabine hard.

Sabine leaned back, her red gloves in her red wool crepe lap. “I am, very much so.  This country is a disaster.  It is a bloody sty, and I am quite done with it.”

“But the estate–”

“Look at this place,” Sabine gestured around them. “Look.  It’s a rotting mess.  And what has this horrible old pile of stone ever done for us?  Other than made us miserable with its expense and its history.  Chrétien wants to keep going, to restore everything– but I have very severe  misgivings about it.  I hope in time I’ll be able to convince him to look to himself first.”

“What about the  _people_?”

“You are my people.  My siblings, my servants, and my friends.  These are my people.  I may sound heartless, but I cannot save the world.  What I can do is protect you all.  And I am determined to do so.”

Rosalin shook her head, mouth drawn tight.  Clearly, she disagreed.  And Sabine really did fear for her.  There was too much death sown into the soil of this country; she had no appetite at all to see any of them struggle to grow in such poisoned conditions.

“If you won’t think of the greater good–” Rosalin shot at her, to which she raised an arch brow. “–Then what, at least, about Mother and Father?  You didn’t say anything about them.”

Feeling a cool stillness crack over head like an egg, Sabine gazed at her. “Our parents have made their choices in life.  I am done with being constantly disappointed in them.  Done cleaning up their messes.  Neither I, nor any of us, owe them anything.  They will have to find their own way, as best they can.”

Rosalin stared back.  It was apparently not the answer she’d expected.

Sabine sighed.  They sat together in silence, each considered the chaotic valleys and hills of their childhood.  The highs and lows of the money and the petty, unrealistic concerns of Lord and Lady Guyenne.  The scrabbling for any sense at all of some safety in their lives.

“My concerns lie with my siblings now,” Sabine stated. “And whether you like it or not, that includes you.  I won’t dictate to you how to live.  But I love you Rosalin, and I want you to be safe and happy.”

Rosalin’s shoulders hunched a bit, and she looked off.

Sabine smiled. “Did you hear me?  I love you, Roz.”

“Yeah.  Well.  I love you too.  I suppose.”

Sabine laughed. “I’ll take it.  Now–” She eyed her sister and her embarrassed expression, and her eyes coi nsidering their conversation.  She continued. “Now.  This latest escapade of the heart– are you or are you not going to tell me about her?”

Rosalin’s eyes shot back to her, scrutinizing for sarcasm.  Sabine smiled.  Rosalin snorted.  She straightened and flicked away her ponytail with cavelier pose.

“ _Well_ – If you really want to know…”


	16. 7kpp Week 2018: Dawn (Sabine/OC-Jan Allard, F/M)

“Maybe she dresses well, but she lives  _across the river_ ,” and “He smells as if he woke up on the wrong side of the banks,”– such statements are not infrequent in Revaire’s capital, and are quite telling about the flavor and structure of the city’s society.  The north-western sectors were rich, ranging around the royal compound and the high-flying white stone palace of the Crown.  The wealthiest merchants, the diplomatic corps, the city estates of the nobility and so forth clustered to the more inland side of the broad river splitting the city.  The other side of the river was dotted with tributaries and siltlands that eventually trickled off into the coast. **  
**

The wetness of the land invariably made construction difficult, and led to unpleasant aspects like foul smells during summer and endless mucky streets during winter and fall.  And these unpleasant aspects invariably led to the shuffling off of the lower classes onto the low southern banks of the river.

But with an air of unsavoriness there also comes a sense of excitement.  The best sort of danger and newness and style.  The poets, the artists, and most popular whores crowd the southside of the city, and they all congregate at the Old Imperial.  It was the oldest theatre left in the city, a remnant of the empire, and the site where the greatest range of society mingles; the nobility would be ashamed to not know the best lines from the latest plays, and the common folk can pay cheaply to be entertained.

And so the sort of simply cut dress– simple enough to put on by yourself and the sort of shape that you could see on any middle or working-class woman– and yet draped in a deceptively inexpensive material, would not be at all out of place on this side of the river.  Even if it was strewn across a recently fashionable writer’s floor.

Sabine luxuriated against the mattress– admittedly thin but still feather-filled.  But honestly, who gave half a copper what the bed was made of if in it was a broad and warm chest for her to sprawl over.  Her fingers curled through his light down of chestnut hair, over his pale skin and its splay of freckles.  Freckles that fell down his face into his chest and over his arms.  She played an imaginary set of pianoforte keys over the dance of freckles, despite not knowing a single basic chord.

Well.  Maybe she didn’t know musical chords, but she did know other things.

Her finger brushed circles into his skin as she glanced up through the falls of her loose dark curls.  He smiled at her with his round cheeks and his square jaw.  His fingers brushed away the hair from her face, caressing over the curls without catching.

She could wear all of her sapphires and emeralds– wear her great choker with its hundreds of diamonds– wear her finest silks, thin as light, and her rarest perfumes– but she never, ever, felt more luxurious than when her hair ran free against her bare skin, freed from her rich trappings, and there was someone there to see it.

He ran a thumb over her cheek, the touch like pressing her face into a bouquet of peonies.  If peonies smelled of sweat and masculinity, and if peonies felt hot-blooded and solid beneath her.

Yes.  This certainly was the best.

“What if–” Jan said. “I became a poet.”

Her brows rose neary to her hairline, and she stared at him.  He stared back, slowly broadening his grin.  She snorted once, twice, and burst into laughter.

“You?  A poet?  I cannot imagine a worse idea in the world.”

His thumb did that lovely caressing thing again. “Oi!  That hurts my fucking feelings!”

“Oh, it does, does it?”

“Perhaps I just needed the proper inspiration to seduce me from the tender embrace of prose.”

He hooked a leg over her legs and pushed up against her thighs and buttocks until their faces were closer.  She wriggled, laughing, and he pinned her with an arm over her back.

“And you’ve found that, have you?” Sabine said.

“Oh, yes,” Jan said, seriously. “In your eyes like the sun.”

He poked her between the brows.  She flinched, sputtering. “You  _dog_ –”

“Your lips like coral,” he said, and wiggled his index over her lips like you would for blowing a raspberry. “There are roses in your cheeks–” He pinched her cheek like the handsiest great-aunt.

She jerked from him as best she could trapped by his leg and arm, and giggled.  He grinned up at her.

“And your milky white breasts,” he said, hand going down to poke her in the sideboob.

Squeaking, she clamped her arm down over the sensitive spot to protect it from any further attempts at some dreaded tickling.  She raised an arch brow at him, fighting down a smile.

“‘Milky white’?”

Where their skin met, a stark contrast was made of his pale and translucent skin and her warm golden-brown teak planes and curves.  The depth of her color and the light within his.

Jan began chuckling helplessly, his eyes crinkling, and he struggled to produce words.

“That– That’s pretty much the stuff of the poet’s pen, right?  Just jumble up the best bits of a woman’s body with some nature and hope it sticks?”

It was, indeed, the sort of metaphors to be found in the lines by every so-called “great” poet of Revaire from the past few decades.  Trite and sentimental stuff about flowers and breasts, etc, which conjured some sort of delicate porcelain vision that had very little to do with real women.

“When I was, you know, a wee lad,” Jan went all. “And my chief worry through all my waking and dreaming hours was my great family jewels–”

“And how long ago was this?  Because very little has changed, I should think.”

He grinned, and ran his hand over the spot he’d poked by her breast.  He went on. “And I was reading all of these awful poems– just  _awful_ – so that I could glean  _something_ to fuel my dedication to polishing–”

She laughed into his collar.

“And there was all these ‘milky breasts.’  Breasts white as snow.  Pink as– I dunno, a damn budgie–  So I had this fucking notion that–” His hand moved up to make cuping gestures over his hairy chest, right around her ears. “Women– no matter if they were tan or brown or even as bloodless as me– that they were just walking around with these white as paper globes under their mantles–”

He jiggled his hands and their imaginary milky white breasts.  Sabine sputtered into laughter and rolled off him, holding her sides and a hand to her eyes.  He leaned up to make air-circles with a finger over her own breasts, and made a silly sound twice: “Just–  _pwop_ ,  _pwop_ – white!  Just all of a sudden, white!”  This sent her eyes leaking.

“So what–” she started, breathless. “So what happened when you actually saw real ones?”

He stilled his face into a mimicry of drawn in brows and a mouth held straight and tight. “She was so pretty.  So, so pretty.  Skin like night.  And for some reason the gods were smiling on me, and I got beneath her collar–” And he widened his eyes with his hands held up to an imaginary chest.

“Heavens!  Are you– are you  _well_?” he shrilled.

She shrieked at this and rolled to laugh into his shoulder.  He giggled too, and his laughing made her laugh harder, and hers added to his, and so on.  She laid back, weak, and swiped at the wetness over her grinning cheeks.

“I’m glad you’ve gained a bit more knowledge outside of poetry since those days,” she said.

“I am too,” he said with earnest delight.

She chuckled.

His room sat at the top of a boarding house on a street that ran quite close to the Old Imperial theatre, and there was no end to the writers, artists, and actors the plagued the district.  They were a more nocturnal breed, and so in these small lavender hours, quiet and stillness coursed smoothly down the building and through the street.  Windows on either end of the room let pale light in over the desks covered in paper, quills, and inkwells, over the bed and a plush rug of a particularly high quality.  The open door of a simple wardrobe revealed a few well-tailored suits that would permit easy transition from the lower districts to the mansions across the river.  A fat black cat sprawled in the propped open sill of one of the windows that looked out over the narrow street.

Jan gazed at her.  She gazed back.

He shifted to move over her, his heat hovering. “No.  If I were to be a poet, I’d look to this wit–”

He pressed slow lips to her cheek, and he went to her lips.  Her hand slid up to hold onto his forearm.

“To this charm–” And he dragged a kiss between them.

He slipped down farther to her breasts. “This warmth–” The right breast. “This kindness.”  The left.

She squeezed once on his arm and asked with her eyes for him to return, and he came up with her arms gliding over his shoulders.  Her fingers slid into his hair.  Their lips drew together, pushed against each other in mutual tides of heat.  The ebb pulled against one lip and the flow slid in with a slow tongue.  It ran low and deep and timeless like the hour; the empty hour of dawn when nothing moves but this very kiss.

She grazed her nose against his and spoke into his lips. “Do you say that to all your lovers?”

“Only,” he said, voice deepened and breathy, “If you’re very–” A light kiss. “And truly–” Another kiss.

He looked her in the eye. “Rich.”

She snorted and turned to giggle into her splayed mess of hair.  He grinned and rested back to the side of her, light dancing in his hazel eyes and over his wash of freckles.  The sight caught her, and her smile softened at the crinkles at the edges of his eyes and the delicate way the shadows curled around his round cheeks.

And the more she looked, the more she found to look at.  The cute snub of his nose, the strength of his clean-lined jaw.

Her smile faded.

Jan saw the shift in her face.  His grin ebbed.  Outside, someone came down the street whistling; a night that had been well-rewarded.  The back set of windows peered down into a reeking alley and out over an adjacent roof covered in bird shit.  Still, she turned her head to glance out them.

“You have to go,” he murmured, so that she wouldn’t have to say it.

Sabine said nothing, still looking out the window.  The linen sheets rustled as she sat up, the shadows along the shifting folds moving like wind over heath.  He sat up too.  Her loose hair swept over her shoulders and down her back.

“Jan,” she said. “This is the last time.”

He nodded. “I know.”

They leaned towards each other, their heads hovering close together.  The cat in the window stretched and turned over.  He tucked a curl behind her ear.

“It’s only a few weeks until you leave,” he said. “And you’ll have a lot to do.  And… this will be easier.”

She smiled wryly, shaking her head. “You don’t have to make this easier on me.”

“Why not?”

She studied him.  He could look serious when he wanted to.  Empathetic and insightful.

“Jan, I’m–”

“Nope.  Nuh-hunh.  We agreed, right?  No apologies.  We’re both grown adults and we knew what we were getting into.”

Her eyes fell.  Their foreheads met, and their breath washed over each other’s chins and lips.  It had been six weeks since this all began.  Longer since they’d met, but six weeks since that first night up in the balconies over the Imperial’s stage and the fairy lights and the flush of flirtation.  Her jewels running down her chest and his shirt laying too open.  And that first night closing with her servant furtively sneaking him into the silk and chiaroscuro of her bedroom.

Six weeks of knowing their path, and following it anyway.  She didn’t regret it.  Didn’t think he did, either, but that didn’t stop it from hurting.

“I wouldn’t change anything, you know,” he said. “This was good.  All of it.  This will… always be special and good to me.  It will always have its place in my heart.”

Her eyes fluttered. “Yes– I’m glad.  I care for you.  I will always care for you.  This, frankly, hurts, but I would never give up our time together just to avoid the hurt.  What I received far outweighs it.  And if I’ve hurt you, I hope it’s the same way for you.”

He reached up to brush his fingertips over her jaw. “You didn’t hurt me.  The situation hurt the both us.”

Their eyes met, so close.

“In another life…” she whispered.

“In another life,” he agreed.

She pulled back before her resolve withered. “But this is the life we have.”

Sabine slowly slipped from the bed.  He watched as she stepped over his room’s tired gray floorboards, picking up her shift, stockings, and stays from where they’d been discarded.  Silently, she dressed herself, hands deft despite the likely infrequency of her having to do so without servants.  He got up as well, and pulled on a pair of breeches before handing her her petticoat, and then her dress.  What a ritual it was: becoming a woman for public.  You did it in all these layers– tiresome, neverending– and perhaps the layers had meaning, and perhaps they were mere obfuscation.

He found some pins and stood behind her, running gentle fingers through her hair and twisting it into a simple not at her neck.  The best he could.  The best he could offer at this point.  She faced away from him, her neck rising long and calling for her pearls and jewels.  Her fingers came up to touched the side where his fingers had just caressed.

“I’ll be leaving the city soon,” he said, to make conversation. “My second-cousin is the steward for Lord Clarmont.  We’ll be herding pigs or something, apparently.”

She turned to him. “Jan…”

He shook his head. “Really.  It’s a social call.”

She studied him, and she nodded. “It’s not for me to say, anyway.”

He reached toward her cheek.  His hand hesitated, so she stepped into it.  Her face laid warm into his palm.  The last kiss was honey and strawberries, morning dew shivering as the sun advanced with its dissolving gaze.

 


End file.
